The Companion System

Companions seem very under used.

Its unfortunate but almost all of my characters have only used one or two companion almost always the healer, cause it just makes things easier. I then have no reason to gear up any of the other companions or use them. Which is a shame but there just is no reason to gear them up. They also can't be used in Operations despite talk orginally of being able to replace the need for a healer if you couldn't find one.

It would be good if there were quests that allowed you to bring one than one companion along or even more of a feel that the companions interact while on the ship. It feels very static that outside of some set piece mission briefings there is very limited interaction.

Companions are such a unique part of the game and it would be good if BW could make them more intergal rather than a healing pet that follows me round. While I like a healing pet its not making the most of the companions.

Spot On!

Major issue with companions is the bad AI with them. HK AI is a huge improvement then what most companions AI is. My biggest complaint about companions is healing companions refuse to move to heal. If the healing companion can shoot a mob he will stand there and shoot and no move to heal you if your fighting something out of range.

I have 1 tank, 1 DPS and I healer geared in 136 plus gear all augmented. For times we need a 4th to finish a HM. Granted some fights are a huge pain with companion that are tanks and healers because you have keep moving them out of stuff. My OP healer used Kaliyo to tank from 1st boss of Foundry to end. Last boss was a huge pain since i basically had to tank and heal. Controlling when Kaliyo attack, was passive and taunted.

Overall, they did a good job with companions. Each companion have a unique story and they are integrated with the class story quite well.

I think Companion Acquisition is good. Some of them had real lackluster acquisition, like Consular's reptile and Inquisitor's pirate. Khem Val and Scorpio had GREAT acquisition story and sequence. Ensign Temple was great too, and you didn't even have to fight her. Xalek acquisition was boring, but it was pretty unique and I wouldn't change it.

Utterly disappointed with Companion Development. Skills just appear out of nowhere. No quests to unlock the skills or abilities, with unique moddable companion-equipment unlocks and rewards and appearance kits; no combat symbiosis as you spend time fighting alongside the same companion for a period of time; no companion-side interaction other than from a rigid affection point system; no evolution of character - story is vastly about their past and barely have anything to do with current events and results of your choices (other than affection point system); etc. After a while, I just think of my companions as "ranged DPS" or "healer" or "melee tank", etc.

Story and Companions were the top two things that the Bioware-effect was supposed to groundbreakingly introduce to the MMO industry. They did a great job with Story, but I can't help but think they only developed the shell of the Companion system and left it gutted because they ran out of time/funding/interest.

I really hope that EAWare decides to revamp the companion system one day. It would be great to go through a cutscene or quest that unlocks the grenade ability that Kaliyo gets, or getting a unique Khem Val appearance kit based on his old war he keeps yapping about, or send Elara away for training to unlock her DPS stance once I get friendly with Command, have certain comps acquire their own appropriately-themed familiars, give companions idle animations - right now they're disturbingly still and dead faced, have it possible for Lokin to mentor/unlock one of my heal abilities, for me to teach Ashara lightning, let me tether my mortar volley with Aric's mortar volley so it's always fired at the same time in the same general area when he's the active comp, etc.

I don't know if it's possible to more completely miss the point of companions or their part in the game.

I would love more interaction with my companions.

Give me a reason to want to gain their affection and put the betrayal system back in. Who cares if some idiot cries because he foolishly killed off all of his companions on a whim. That was the whole point of the feature is to make you regret your choice.

I'd like to have a skill tree for companions with the ability to pick and choose the abilities and passives that best suit our individual play styles. I'd also like some improvements in the AI, maybe even include a tactics system similar to Dragon Age: Origins / Dragon Age 2.

I would also like to see more interaction and conversations with companions both out in the field and back on my ship. I'd really love to see some movement on the ship with some background random events.

Lastly with a talent system, I'd love to have an ability given back to the player via the talent system. For example Doc and Kira could both provide a stealth to the player via their talent trees.

A big feel of consequence would be brought back with it, feel its really missing,

As many people have said, when Companions were first discussed my hope was that they'd be relatively independent and that the missions we'd be sending them on would be based on their themes - snipers doing snipery things, smugglers smuggling, marauders marauding... juggernauts... juggling

More interaction really would be nice, there is such a massive pool of dialogue it's seriously disappointing that on those rare occasions when I do deliberately click on them, their only response is a curt 'don't speak to me'.

It'd be nice if companions could interact characters and NPC's - occasionally emoting greetings & such. I know most things take masses of man-hours but surely something like this could be accomplished with less effort than lifting the Lusitania.

I have mixed feelings about companions. At one side I like having them around, at the other side ... urgh.
I will speak mainly from the trooper point of view, since that is my favourite class and I am most familiar with it.
I can understand the one player-one companion deal with most classes. Jedi have a padawan, Sith have an apprentice. Smugglers I suppose can have a trusted friend to watch their back. But imperial agents? Troopers?
No sane squad commander would rush into unknown dangers with two thirds of his or her squad playing pazaak back in the base, or on the ship as the case may be. They would bring the whole team since that is kind of the point of having a squad around isn't it?
Second, for the trooper, and I suppose that goes for other classes as well, some of the choices are .. odd. E.g. M1-4X is a marvel of engineering and totally wasted on a spec ops squad like havoc. He belongs on the battlefields not with a squad that does the covert and behind enemy lines operations.
Third, normal military procedures would break the squad into two fire teams. Team leader (rifle/specialist), rifleman (rifle/spcialist), heavy gunner (suppression fire and grenadier combined). Both teams would operate in tandem at short distance (i.e. support fire range) from each other. For a spec ops unit the majority of men would be specialists of sorts since their job is not normally straight combat but things like infiltration, reconnaissance and so on; for which specialised training is needed.
It would have been much nicer if the typical trooper mission would require two different goals and that as a squad leader you had to break up your group so that team B could go after what you consider the secondary mission, and that the men you assign to that team affect the chance of success in completing it. As leader of team A you go after the primary objective with your fire team, and if team B fails you have to deal with the aftermath of that, same as if your team fails their mission, team B will have to step in and (help) mop up. Or sometimes if either team fails both teams fail.
It would give the trooper a unique gameplay within the single player campaign. And it would explain why you actually get 5 companions (the window cleaner droid doesn't count) when there is only one of them who is a perfect match for your advanced class and who you end up using 99pct of the time anyway. What really is the point of the dps companions when you will almost always need either M1-4X (or Vik if you prefer him) or Dorne for tanking or healing?

I do understand why this would be difficult to reconcile with other classes that have only a single companion, but at the same time, they too have the problem of lots of companions just sitting around on the ship. For them too it would be nice if the player has to assign companions to actual sub-missions whose success or failure will affect how the main (player) mission plays out.
It would be an incentive to equip all companions with good gear, to get their affection up and to think about how to tackle a mission, perhaps even as losses on the other team(s) mount up to retreat and rethink your strategy. And yes, it would cut down on the ability to have them do tradeskill missions, but I am not convinced that is actually a bad thing. They can still do those when you team up with other actual players, which means that if you want to tradeskill extensively you are encouraged to play with others at the same time.

And it would not be an insurmountalbe effort to do this. All it really requires is that past act 3 missions are tuned for 3 or 6 characters not for 2 or 4. The biggest amount of work would be to create the 'assign to teams' part and the change in arts and layout so that it allows teams of 6. With ops they already have the possibility of teams larger than 4 so this should be doable even for a smaller development team. Writing would have to be a little different with mission objectives split in one, two or three parts to which a team must be assigned. The biggest amount of work for the developers would be to run the simulation part of the other team(s) so that as team leader you get feedback on how they are doing in their virtual fight.