Hello. Recent returning player and I just saw all these forums threads complaining about companions. "They're worthless." "No, they're super good."

 

What'd I miss, general Discussion?

try , i dunno reading one of the multiple 140 page threads from the last few days , and you can see both sides arguments.

Hello. Recent returning player and I just saw all these forums threads complaining about companions. "They're worthless." "No, they're super good."

 

What'd I miss, general Discussion?

 

Welcome back! You picked an interesting time to return.

They went from being gods to being very puny mortals, and I'm guessing they'll go for demi-god status next?

try , i dunno reading one of the multiple 140 page threads from the last few days , and you can see both sides arguments.

 

As far as I can tell, it looks like they mucked about with companions in some way and people are pretty upset.

 

But thanks for the passive aggressiveness though!

As far as I can tell, it looks like they mucked about with companions in some way and people are pretty upset.

 

But thanks for the passive aggressiveness though!

Why don't you just read Eric Musco's posts on the issue?

Quick version:

 

After 4.0, comps (especially healing comps) where extremely strong.

 

Bioware took the Nerf Bat to them, and people started complaining. You know, like the forum does every time theres a change in the game.

 

Bioware announced that they will rebuff comps somehow. We won't know exactly how much until Monday.

A vocal group asked for comps to be nerfed post 4.0, BW does a 75% nerf and makes comps weaker than pre-4.0, ****-storm on forums and all social media ensues, BW realizes they ****ed up, a buff is coming and a write-up on what that means, next week. Edited November 21, 2015 by Eillack

The rest you can read for yourself

 

Hey folks,

 

If you haven’t yet seen the 4.0.2 patch notes, you can view them here. There are some patch notes that we wanted to highlight and talk about specifically.

 

• Companion base stats have been reduced.
  
• Companion damage and healing output has been reduced.
  

 

Some of you will certainly ask, why the need to nerf Companions? This is something that we definitely saw the community be divided on, and it was good for us to hear feedback from both sides. Ultimately, this decision came down to our own goals for Companions, along with data on how they were performing. What we saw in those instances is that Companions, simply put, were just way too good. Their healing and damage output could be greater than that of a very skilled player with a fully maximized character. In order for you to understand why we are making these changes, we thought it best to explain our goals for Companions in Fallen Empire.

 

In KotFE, with a large focus on going back to story, we wanted to make sure that all of our story content was accessible to all of our players. The power that Companions bring to the table, definitely played a part in that accessibility. Companions, from a combat perspective, should complement and provide support to your character, not overshadow them. However, in looking at how strong Companions are, we may have gone a bit too far in that direction. Simply put, while playing through much of the game, there are a lot of situations in regular combat where it is practically impossible for you to be killed if you have a healing Companion. Although this can be fun for a time, this wasn’t our goal. Companions should be strong, they should fill any role you need, but they should not make your actual gameplay be overshadowed by how strong they are.

 

So with 4.0.2 we have brought their effectiveness down quite a bit, let’s talk about some of the specifics here:

• There isn’t a flat % that healing was reduced by. Effectiveness reduction varies greatly depending on level, Influence, level sync, etc. That being said, the healer companions are still quite competitive, but they no longer trivialize content that was meant to be challenging.
  
• Healing power increase by Influence level has been increased. That means that as you scale up Influence levels with a Companion they will get more powerful per level than before. This helps to offset the base healing reduction a bit as you gain influence with your companion.
  

 

We did want to make some improvements to tanking Companions:

• We increased the threat generated by tank companions, so they should be able to hold the attention of enemy NPCs better than before.
  
• We fixed an issue involving the tank companion’s mass grapple ability, it will no longer pull in enemies that are out of combat.
  

 

Will your Companions feel a bit weaker than they did when KotFE launched? Yes. But believe me they will still carry their weight and fill the role you need them to in combat. All that we ask is that you log in tomorrow, and check the changes yourself. Play around with the Companions in each role and let us know your feedback. Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

 

 

 

Hey folks,

 

Following the Companion changes we made Tuesday in 4.0.2, we want to gather your feedback on your gameplay experiences. We hope by this point you have had some time to jump in and get your hands on the changes yourselves. First, before we get into the feedback we are looking for, let’s talk a bit about our specific design goals related to Companions:

 

• Leveling Content – Challenge Level: Low. To complete this content, a player should have a basic understanding of game mechanics and have level-appropriate gear. Their companion’s role shouldn’t matter.
  
• KotFE Chapters – Challenge Level: Low. Like leveling content, a player should have a basic understanding of game mechanics and have level-appropriate gear. Their companion’s role shouldn’t matter.
  
• [Heroic 2] Missions – Challenge Level: Medium. To complete this content, a player should have a good understanding of their class and game mechanics, as well as level appropriate gear. Their companion’s role should begin to matter at this point, supplementing the player’s own Discipline. We expect some players to find these challenging initially—maybe even needing a friend’s help--but once the player earns better gear, a few levels of Influence with their companion, and has a greater understanding of the game, they should be able to solo the hardest of these missions.
  
• Star Fortress – Challenge Level: Medium. These are similar to [Heroic 2] Missions. Star Fortresses should be similar to [Heroic 2] Missions. To complete this content, we expect you to have level-appropriate gear, a good understanding of your class, a companion with a few levels of Influence, as well as being in a role that supplements the player’s. We expect most players to be able to solo these with a little practice and effort on their part to gain some increased power.
  
• Heroic Star Fortress – Challenge Level: High. At this point we expect players to really understand their class, their companion, and their gear. Players should have sought out gear upgrades, as well as increased their companions’ Influence level. These are meant to be challenging and difficult to do solo.
  
• “The One and Only” Achievement should still be possible. As an Achievement, this is definitely intended to be extremely hard and rewarding to players. This means the Achievement can be exceptionally challenging, and similar to HM Star Fortress, you will need to be a skilled player, with moderate to high Influence level with your companion, and very good gear on your character.
  

Based on these statements above, do you think that these are true after Tuesday’s changes? What content is more or less difficult than you expected? Is there something that is just flat out impossible?

 

Please give us your feedback, and we simply ask you to be as constructive as possible. Include information such as:

• Your level
  
• Roughly Average Item Rating
  
• Discipline
  
• Companion
  
• Companion role
  
• Companion Influence level
  
• Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?)
  
• Your personal experience while playing this content
  

If you have a video or other related content to go with your feedback, feel free to link that as well as it will allow us the best insight into your experiences.

 

The team will be reviewing all feedback, along with supporting data, to see what / if any future adjustments need to be made. Thank you all in advance for your feedback!

 

-eric

 

Hey folks,

 

First off, we want to thank all of you for your feedback about Companion balance following 4.0.2. As we go into the weekend, we wanted you to know that we have gone through this thread, the forums, Reddit, and social media to gather everyone’s perspectives. We have come out of this with quite a few action items that we are going to take, including buffs for Companions. On Monday, we are going to release a forum post highlighting our plans to address current Companion balance, along with the state of Heroic Missions and Star Fortress.

 

Thank you all once again for your feedback.

 

-eric

Edited November 21, 2015 by Nommaz

A vocal group asked for comps to be nerfed post 4.0, BW does a 75% nerf and makes comps weaker than pre-4.0, ****-storm on forums and all social media ensues, BW realizes they ****ed up, a buff is coming and a write-up on what that means, next week.

 

Stops with the finger pointing already. I could rverse your argument to fit my agenda too, but in the end, it's pointless and puerile.

 

Fact of the matter is, bioware is uncertain where to strike the balance with the companion. On one hand they want the game to be very accessible, but on the other hand they still want it to be a game. Plus there was some unfortunate side effect of people getting kicked an replace by companion left and right.

 

Challenge in the game exist mainly in the form of group content, like hard mode and nightmare operation. I regret that bioware can't give us some challenging solo content. Tunrning off companion fully or partially is not a solution though.

We will know soon enough what they intend to do with the companions, they dropped the nerfhammer a bit hard so it needs to be a little lighter.

Quick version:

 

After 4.0, comps (especially healing comps) where extremely strong.

 

Bioware took the Nerf Bat to them, and people started complaining. You know, like the forum does every time theres a change in the game.

 

Bioware announced that they will rebuff comps somehow. We won't know exactly how much until Monday.

The thing is I am still not convinced the companions had been really that much stronger with 4.0, I mean sure for some people it might feel like it, but I think they have been just like they would have purple gear in every slot, which is how some people had their companions anyway, and sure with the new influence ranks one could raise that then higher. Anyway, Maybe I am just spoiled, had my Treek, who was nerfed ability wise with 4.0 anyway, so the new system doesn't felt much different to me, but some people complained, guess they never knew what their companions were cpable of with decent gear until 4.0 and they didn't like what they got then. And then BioWare nerfed companions into the ground.

Challenge in the game exist mainly in the form of group content, like hard mode and nightmare operation. I regret that bioware can't give us some challenging solo content. Tunrning off companion fully or partially is not a solution though.

 

Turning the companion off fully or partially is a solution, its just not a solution you want or are happy with.

You see you CAN turn it off and make it harder for yourself there is a choice, with the nerf there is no choice its the same for everyone If someone wants it easier.

Same as level sync, it should also be optional, so those like yourself that want a "challenge" can level down, and those like me that don't want to be gimped to do old content we out level can stay at 65.

It becomes a choice.

However there is a crown on here that doesn't want choice, they just think its fair that everyone has it harder, rather than "make it artificially hard" for themselves, because "its not right"

Well my feeling;) is that:

 

If you got 20,000k heal in 4.0

 

And now you get 3,500 in 4.02

 

You'll start getting 11,750 when/if the "fix" is put in game.

 

Wonder if this splitting the baby in half will quiet the forums down, and decrease what ever unsubbing is going on though?

Stops with the finger pointing already. I could rverse your argument to fit my agenda too, but in the end, it's pointless and puerile.

Fact of the matter is, bioware is uncertain where to strike the balance with the companion. On one hand they want the game to be very accessible, but on the other hand they still want it to be a game. Plus there was some unfortunate side effect of people getting kicked an replace by companion left and right.

 

Challenge in the game exist mainly in the form of group content, like hard mode and nightmare operation. I regret that bioware can't give us some challenging solo content. Tunrning off companion fully or partially is not a solution though.

 

Does it make you upset that I am stating what actually happened?

Well my feeling;) is that:

 

If you got 20,000k heal in 4.0

 

And now you get 3,500 in 4.02

 

You'll start getting 11,750 when/if the "fix" is put in game.

 

Wonder if this splitting the baby in half will quiet the forums down, and decrease what ever unsubbing is going on though?

 

Not sure honestly. Some people tasted 4.0 and loved it. The game play suited their lifestyle, and to them Bioware had done an excellent job.

Meanwhile others liked 4.0.2 where they felt a kind of accomplishment after killing a couple of mobs - ok calm down, only teasing

 

Now the (possible) middle ground......well there are a couple of well publicized quotations about compromises:

 

1) "A good compromise is one were both parties are equally dissatisfied."

and

2) "A good compromise leaves everyone angry."

 

Personally, I think we'll have the second one here.

Hello. Recent returning player and I just saw all these forums threads complaining about companions. "They're worthless." "No, they're super good."

 

What'd I miss, general Discussion?

 

Too lazy to read the 100+ threads OP?

Not sure honestly. Some people tasted 4.0 and loved it. The game play suited their lifestyle, and to them Bioware had done an excellent job.

Meanwhile others liked 4.0.2 where they felt a kind of accomplishment after killing a couple of mobs - ok calm down, only teasing

 

Now the (possible) middle ground......well there are a couple of well publicized quotations about compromises:

 

1) "A good compromise is one were both parties are equally dissatisfied."

and

2) "A good compromise leaves everyone angry."

 

Personally, I think we'll have the second one here.

 

Yes, I fear you are right...

Companions were OP after 4.0 This from a pretty casual player (mostly above-casual altoholic, so way casual from a single- or few-characters player). Lots of alts, highest at 44 now. Still companions were OP.

 

But after 4.0.2... well, companions had, pretty much across the board, 2.5x to 3x the health of the char. Now, they, in tank setting, have 2x the health tops. Healing and DPS reduced likewise. Tank mode also doesn't keep aggro as well as with 4.0 (or before that even). They fiddled with the numbers something bad in 4.0.2: they reduced all stats and DPS, and, as the patch notes say, raised threat generation a bit. But obviously not enough to compensate for the DPS/stats reduction.

Companions between 4.0 and 4.0.2 were tuned higher than the player character. I know I had noticed on one of my characters that my character (reached 65 while doing SoR so the gear was just 178s) had mastery and endurance both in the mid-3000s (I think another character that I have in 208s might have those stats in the upper 3000s / lower 4000s?) while their companions came with mastery and endurance both in the mid-5000s. (The high endurance of course meant that companion health was that much larger than my character's as well.) That and apparently also some coefficients that determine the strength of individual companion abilities are what got scaled down with 4.0.2 (people have been complaining about the severity of those cuts, I don't know how much of that is the devs overshooting the intended mark and how much is just people wishing that it had stayed at the excessively high levels), after which I checked again and saw that the stats were in fact much closer together. Although it does seem as if the sweet spot where they're comparable to pre-4.0 companions (health (for dps/heals) within a few thousand points higher than the player character) is somewhere around influence 10 or 15. Earlier than that, companion stats can be equal to or a bit weaker than the player character.

 

There have been possible bugs with the way companions work in 4.0's automatic scaling system that affect their survivability negatively. Sometimes (usually when level sync is not active) the companion will show as having zero armor rating / zero damage reduction which has meant that in some tough situations even the overtuned companions would just melt under the pressure. Also, tank companion stats show as if they do not have a shield generator equipped (which means that any points allocated into shield and absorb are doing nothing for them). But I guess apparently their taunt generates a bubble that absorbs a certain amount of damage and that's supposed to make up for it (although that was overtuned and got cut down significantly with 4.0.2 as well)? Anyway, they've said that the armor rating problem will be fixed in 4.0.3, I think. But I don't know what the deal is with the shield generator.

Edited November 21, 2015 by Muljo_Stpho