What is the point of a companion gift cooldown?

Yeah, because nothing says "romance" quite like cold, hard cash.

At my house, Christmas is about the kids - even though they are teenagers. They open their presents first....and are expected to say thank you for each gift, blah blah blah. I think this year was the first time one of us (my husband and I) opened one before the kids were finished.

It exist so Bioware gets you to play the game longer and can charge you for it.

That would be idiotically short-sighted of them. What was the point of this CD? Tell it I hate it.

please remove this cool down. getting 5 companions up to max affection is enough of a time sink with out the added 30 second wait per gift...

This is the problem with the SWTOR community. You all fight about the little details of a system, when the whole thing needs to be revisited and revised. Same thing with the exhaustion zone thread--it's not the mechanics of the exhaustion zone that people need to be fighting to change, it's the linearity, restrictiveness and demanding a more "creative" way to stop you from going to the planet's edge.

So with this, why not demand that companion affection actually MEAN something? Should it not improve your companion's combat skill? How about their chance to crit on recipes? How about unlock special abilities? How about open up quests that allow you to obtain mounts or cosmetic gear? How about unlock more customization options? I mean the list of missing features with companions could go on-and-on.

Who gives a damn about the gifts -- an absolutely pathetic solution to affection gain -- when it won't net you any major returns in the end?

Yes it does. And that's why it should stay. Gifts are not meant as the primary way of increasing companions' affection. They are intended only to fix affection damage after some of your (intentional or unintentional) decisions. I would have made this colldown separate for each companion and increased it to 1 day

They probably have the cool down just so you cant get 10k affection in 5 mins. I always thought that the affection was so supposed to go along with the story. Example: 1k at lvl 5, 5k at lvl 25.

Is it? Isn't the reason we level from 1 to 50 instead of just getting everything immediately so we keep playing? Bioware wants our money - but we want our challenges, otherwise, there is no game.

I do not know off-hand how the rewards scale, but I presume one reason is that you, once you made a trillion* Credits, that you buy tons of Tier 1 gifts and max everyone's affection within 10 minutes. Or at least bring it to a ridicilious high level. You are expected tow ork for it with dialog options and then gifts.

*) arbtirary number standing for a high amount of Credits

It comes down to whether you view it as merely a game mechanic or as some semblance of social gift giving. It makes little sense if only viewed as a game mechanic but, if you consider what it represents, it is needed until the companions can serve us with restraining orders.