Its simple, each kill made with a companion garners 1 influence point for that companion. Other variations could be 1 point for each silver/gold mob killed, or 1 point for silver mob and 2 points for gold mob.

It makes sense -- this way your companion's influence truly will grow the more time you spend with them.

With 250k max influence, I don't think it will imbalance the gifting and conversation (approve/disapprove) systems.

I am sure the players that make a bucket load of credits on the GTN via selling rank 6 legendary gifts....but i personally love the idea.

It would also give more of a reason to use each character instead of using only a single companion, unless the class quest requires a specific one.

It would also give more of a reason to use each character instead of using only a single companion, unless the class quest requires a specific one.

Plus as I realised recently the influence gain (none gift) is only most beneficial for your first companion (maybe 2nd in the case of Knight since Kira comes right at the end), as I was playing my warrior, I got Vette up to level 13 faily easy even while still on DK but when I picked up Jaesa at the end of chapter 1 she was a rank 1 noob, who was nowhere near as good as Vette without a shedload of gifts to bring her to the same level.

So influence really works best for those companions that you have right at the beginning of the game.

Interesting idea. Don't think OP realizes how slow that rate will be.

Go to your achievements window and look under companions.

There's an achievement specifically for the # of kills per companion, and it has taken me AGES to complete.

This would be one of the very few instances F2P might have an advantage over subs. If you only have one or two characters, but log the same questing hours that I do, your points will be concentrated on a handful of companions.

By contrast, my kill-influence points will be spread out over 23 characters.

Can we amend your idea to scale to legacy level? As legacy level goes up, so does your influence per kill?

At 50 each it would take 5,000 kills to reach max. Still more than high enough not to tank the market for companion gifts.

Plus as I realised recently the influence gain (none gift) is only most beneficial for your first companion (maybe 2nd in the case of Knight since Kira comes right at the end), as I was playing my warrior, I got Vette up to level 13 faily easy even while still on DK but when I picked up Jaesa at the end of chapter 1 she was a rank 1 noob, who was nowhere near as good as Vette without a shedload of gifts to bring her to the same level.

 

So influence really works best for those companions that you have right at the beginning of the game.

If they added the 1 influence per kill the result would kind of depend on how you play. Do you sneak around / stealth through mobs when you can or do you clear out everything that gets in your way? Do you go out of your way to go after the bonuses on missions? Depending on where you're at in the game, mob density and respawn rates might be higher or lower, which affects how much gets in your way.

In conquests, for the heroics and a rampage on the same planet I've had times where I hit the 250 kills before I was done with all of the heroics and I've had times where I wasn't quite there yet after running them all. In either case though, if I could have been earning affection/influence along the way? That's 250 points, give or take. Compare that to conversations, where the total that you see in the mission reward window might be something like 500 or 1000 or 2000 or maybe more. Compare to gifts, which vary depending on type, quality, and the companion's preferences but you can see numbers all the way up to 2048 from a single gift.

The kills could add up in the long run (250k kills = max influence with zero needed from conversations or gifts, however unreasonable as that target would be to reach), but we're talking roughly the time it takes to run a planet's heroics (without rushing them) and getting around 250 kills along the way being worth about the same as a conversation that the companion barely responded to or giving a, hold on a second...

loved rank 1 blue to a rank1-5 companion

loved rank 2 blue to a rank6-9 companion

loved rank 3 blue to a rank10-14 companion

loved rank 4 blue to a rank15-19 companion

loved rank 5 blue to a rank20-29 companion

loved rank 6 blue to a rank30-39 companion

loved rank 1 purple to a rank20-29 companion

loved rank 2 purple to a rank30-39 companion

loved rank 3 purple to a rank40-49 companion

Just to give some perspective to how much difference this suggestion could make.

Can we amend your idea to scale to legacy level? As legacy level goes up, so does your influence per kill?

At 50 each it would take 5,000 kills to reach max. Still more than high enough not to tank the market for companion gifts.

Legacy? At that kind of rate? Sounds way too hopeful. I could imagine it scaling with influence rank, basically just balancing against the scale of how many points are between one tier of ranks and the next (like in the gift chart, 10-14 bracket vs 15-19 bracket). At rank 10 you're at 10,000 influence and at rank 15 you're at 22,500 influence. Difference of 12,500. Compare 1-5 vs 6-9. At rank 1 you're at 0 influence and at rank 6 you're at 3,600 influence. Difference of 3,600. It's about 3.47 times as far from 10 to 15 as it is from 1 to 6. They could scale up to 3 influence per kill in the rank10-14 range and the rate would only be a bit slower than going through the rank1-5 range at 1 influence per kill.

Hmmm... I just looked at those numbers for the 6-9 range as well and 2 influence per kill would actually make that range a bit quicker to level through compared to the range before it. Anyway, if the rates follow that pattern the high end for influence per kill would be 7 points in the 40-49 range. (Technically 8 above that, but you're already at the max at that point.) 50 per kill in any range would be crazy fast by comparison.

(Off topic: Pink still doesn't sound right as describing the artifact quality items. Those items are purple. At the most, in comparison to the rich/deep purple / very dark blue of the legendary quality items, artifact items look like a slightly light/pale purple. It's the shade of purple paired with pink in the pink+purple dye pack. It's not pink. (Just a thought when looking at the chart on that page.))

EDIT: Threw the numbers around in a spreadsheet real quick and came up with this:

Through the 1 to 5 range is 3,600 inf, which would be 3,600 kills at 1 inf/kill.

Through the 6 to 9 range is 6,400 inf, which would be 3,200 kills at 2 inf/kill.

Through the 10 to 14 range is 12,500 inf, which would be 4,167 kills at 3 inf/kill.

Through the 15 to 19 range is 17,500 inf, which would be 4,375 kills at 4 inf/kill.

Through the 20 to 29 range is 50,000 inf, which would be 10,000 kills at 5 inf/kill.

Through the 30 to 39 range is 70,000 inf, which would be 11,667 kills at 6 inf/kill.

Through the 40 to 49 range is 90,000 inf, which would be 12,857 kills at 7 inf/kill.

Alternately, with the suggestion of legacy level allowing up to 50 inf/kill, those ranges would fly by in 72 kills, 128 kills, 250 kills, 350 kills, 1,000 kills, 1,400 kills, and 1,800 kills. (Grand total 5,000 kills.)

(The numbers are kind of daunting and in that slow influence tier based buildup, but remember that this is not standing alone as the only method to build influence. We would still have conversations and gifts on top of this. We'd earn a few thousand points here and a few thousand points there as we go through story and as we dump gifts on them.)

(Off topic: Pink still doesn't sound right as describing the artifact quality items. Those items are purple. At the most, in comparison to the rich/deep purple / very dark blue of the legendary quality items, artifact items look like a slightly light/pale purple. It's the shade of purple paired with pink in the pink+purple dye pack. It's not pink. (Just a thought when looking at the chart on that page.))

The word you are looking for is "magenta", not "pink", although magenta is in that uncomfortable space between purple and pink.

Thanks for all the positive feedback, additional suggestions, and variations.

If it were only 1 inf/kill it certainly would take a long time to increase your influence level solely through killing mobs. The base idea was for it to be a supplement to the other forms of building influence, and to more accurately reflect the goal of building influence with a companion based on the amount of time you spend with him/her. Especially for the companions and alliance members that do not get influence from conversations.

I like the idea of having the inf/kill ratio increase with each companion's influence level -- that was a grand suggestion by Muljo_Stpho building off of JacksonMo's legacy level idea. The base amount could be:

• 1 inf/ normal mob kill;
  
• 2 inf/ silver mob kill;
  
• 3 inf/ gold mob kill;
  
• 4 inf/ mini-boss kill; and
  
• 5 inf/ boss kill.
  

At every 5 levels of influence the base amount increases by 1. This way the mob difficulty also plays a part in how your influence grows.

Cheers

Very good suggestion.

one i made as well. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=858294

if various people start to make similar suggestion independently of each other it is an indication that this is a rather solid concept.

to extend on the idea i would make the influence gain from combat depend on the companion in order to give the whole thing a little bit of character: some might only be impressed by bringing down big game (e.g. Qyzen Fess) - but reward that with larger influence gains - while others companions may get a steady but low increase from every kill. other companions that dislike combat in general (e.g. Talos) might not gain influence at all but there should be other ways to increase influence for those. perhaps via gathering skills or crafting missions. another possibility would be that the influence gain depends on the faction of enemies one kills (an imperial nationalist might not be too found seeing fellow imperials being slained).

I'd like to see a small amount of influence per mission completed.

Heroic or Story Missions = X amount

Missions = Y amount (less than X)

Explore Missions = Z amount (less than Y)

Per-kill is great for DPS characters but for tanks/healers who due to lower DPS might try to avoid killing unnecessary enemies it would be a bit lopsided.

I wonder just how in-depth they would be willing and able to make this. Killtech's suggested addition is practically saying that all game actions would be categorized in various ways and there would be some sort of check run on it at every single mission reward earned, at every object in the environment interacted with, at every enemy killed, at every piece of loot collected, etc. to determine if it's something that the companion cares about and add an appropriate amount of influence, modified by the companion's current tier.

Action type check might give the action a value like 0, 1, 2, or 3 and then if the current influence rank is in tier X it multiplies that value by X. Like for Qyzen as an example maybe he's unfazed by regular strength enemies killed (base=0), kind of interested in silver and gold kills (base=1), impressed by soloable champion kills (base=2), and goes crazy for group champion kills like world bosses (base=3), which allows for 21 inf per world boss while in tier 7 (ranks 40-49). Talos on the other hand might be unfazed by kills of any kind, kind of interested when you collect from specific crew skill missions that could be designated as intellectual*, impressed by gathering from archaeology nodes, and goes crazy for ... completion of missions/bonuses that could count as "relic preservation" (something collected and delivered to a dropbox)? (edit: maybe the other way around on the interested/impressed for Talos? since you can find nodes on-planet quicker than it takes for the crew missions to return)

* they could try to come up with half a dozen or so crew skill categories, each category would include half of the gathering and mission skills (obviously there would be a lot of overlap between categories), and maybe every companion could have at least some interest in one of the categories

Per-kill is great for DPS characters but for tanks/healers who due to lower DPS might try to avoid killing unnecessary enemies it would be a bit lopsided.

It's more of a stealth vs non-stealth thing than a DPS vs non-DPS thing. It depends on the layout of the location and mobs as well. Sometimes there's room to get around them without stealth. But sometimes there isn't. And if you don't really need the kills and there is a possible opening to slip by without fighting you're going to try it as a DPS as well.

When I went through the same area on my Jedi Guardian tank that I've gone through on my Sith Marauder (I forget, I think both had a door at the back of the Rist compound on Alderaan?) I'm pretty sure I was not killing any fewer enemies through there. (Actually, I probably killed fewer in there with the Marauder since they've got that really brief bit of stealth that they can use. Can't use it all the time because of the short duration and the cooldown, but you can skip line of enemies here or there.) Go in on my Operative healer or Assassin tank though, and yes I skipped everything. Because they were stealth and they could do that, not because they were not DPS.

The more intricate and detailed systems, with each companion gaining influence in a specially nuanced manner, makes sense. They would add a lot of immersion value. However, I am concerned EA/BW would not go through the time and effort to carefully plan it out. The simpler the better --and the more likely it will take hold-- assuming that EA/BW actually ever elevates ideas out of the suggestion box into reality.

I would leave it at as a simple inf / kill ratio as I described above.

There is certainly a potential for a DPS v. Non-DPS, or Stealth v. Non-Stealth, disparity in gaining companion influence through kills, but inf / kill system should be designed to supplement, not replace, the current influence system.