This bug is as old as the game I think. Is there a way to stop my companion from auto summoning every bloody time I come out of a conversation or cut-scene? This has got to be one of the most annoying actions in the game. I'm freaking sick of it.

And I don't mean just sending my companions off to do chores or putting them on passive. I mean dismissing them FOR GOOD!

HEEEEEELP!

It would be nice if there was a way to dismiss one's companion. There are some temporary ways to achieve that (aside from simply dismissing). If you dismiss your companion whilst in your stronghold prior to logging out of the game then when you next log in you will not have a companion. Also, if you can put yourself into a situation where you are forced to use a specific companion that is then removed (such as Chapter I of Fallen Empire) then you can go about sans a companion. Unfortunately, either case is generally temporary as various actions will bring forth a companion again.

Also, I see your quick play issue has resolved. Glad that is sorted and you are able to play again.

It would be nice if there was a way to dismiss one's companion. There are some temporary ways to achieve that (aside from simply dismissing). If you dismiss your companion whilst in your stronghold prior to logging out of the game then when you next log in you will not have a companion. Also, if you can put yourself into a situation where you are forced to use a specific companion that is then removed (such as Chapter I of Fallen Empire) then you can go about sans a companion. Unfortunately, either case is generally temporary as various actions will bring forth a companion again.

 

Also, I see your quick play issue has resolved. Glad that is sorted and you are able to play again.

I've noticed when in ops groups, when you leave them, a lot (if not most) of the time your companion is gone, and you have to re-summon. They pop back up again, same as the other ways. Not really convenient to join an ops group just to get rid of your comp, but it was just another way of doing it...lol.

The cooking and serving missions for the Feast of Prosperity do an excellent job of dismissing your companion. I have been able to travel to different worlds, such as for the gathering ingredients mission, and even did the new story mission, "Meeting Jekiah Ordo," without my companion being resummoned. Not sure if it matters that I never resummoned my comp after the FoP mission dismissed them, but there is that. Of course, you would have to avoid any situation that forces a comp.

It would seem that anytime the companion portrait is gone (not empty, like when you dismiss them, but completely gone) your companion is less likely to reappear following cutscenes, travel, etc.

The cooking and serving missions for the Feast of Prosperity do an excellent job of dismissing your companion. I have been able to travel to different worlds, such as for the gathering ingredients mission, and even did the new story mission, "Meeting Jekiah Ordo," without my companion being resummoned. Not sure if it matters that I never resummoned my comp after the FoP mission dismissed them, but there is that. Of course, you would have to avoid any situation that forces a comp.

 

It would seem that anytime the companion portrait is gone (not empty, like when you dismiss them, but completely gone) your companion is less likely to reappear following cutscenes, travel, etc.

well, for at least the next two weeks we've a way of getting rid of the comps...lol

It would seem that anytime the companion portrait is gone (not empty, like when you dismiss them, but completely gone) your companion is less likely to reappear following cutscenes, travel, etc.

That's true.

I typically use a disguise terminal in my SH to "long-term" dismiss my comp.

That's true.

 

I typically use a disguise terminal in my SH to "long-term" dismiss my comp.

That's actually a good idea, I've never really taken notice that they disappear when you use the disguise terminal...lol

I have the opposite issue where mine keeps vanishing as I move around the game. So annoying to go into combat and suddenly realise my companion has run off again.

Mine too. Also, I have the opposite problem mentioned here that I have to continually re-summon every time I fast travel.

I have the opposite issue where mine keeps vanishing as I move around the game. So annoying to go into combat and suddenly realise my companion has run off again.

lol, yup that can happen when in a group, and you mount, forgetting to summon, then you run in to battle, and suddenly you're alone...lol

Bumping this up. I'm getting sick and tired of my companion auto appearing every time I log in via my guild FS or anywhere for that matter.

4 hours ago, Jarbarian said:

Bumping this up. I'm getting sick and tired of my companion auto appearing every time I log in via my guild FS or anywhere for that matter.

Yeah, that's an annoying one. There are lots of inconsistencies with companions. Sometimes they appear when you unsummoned them. Sometimes they don't appear even though they were summoned. Sometimes the game switches the active companion randomly. This last one is the most annoying to me. Usually, it switches to Theron Shan for some reason. I hate having to scan through my companion list to resummon the one I had before. Tedious and tiring.

31 minutes ago, ThanderSnB said:

Sometimes the game switches the active companion randomly. This last one is the most annoying to me. Usually, it switches to Theron Shan for some reason.

I have *never* *ever* seen this happen.  Ever.  I've never seen any complaints here about it either, until you mentioned it.

1 minute ago, SteveTheCynic said:

I have *never* *ever* seen this happen.  Ever.  I've never seen any complaints here about it either, until you mentioned it.

The only time I’ve had it happen is when doing the quest on Iokath where you do the console daily.  It makes you put 5 cores in the socket as a monitor and when you load back in as your toon, Theron is always there as the summoned companion. 

On 10/24/2020 at 6:39 PM, TheOuroborus said:

This bug is as old as the game I think. Is there a way to stop my companion from auto summoning every bloody time I come out of a conversation or cut-scene? This has got to be one of the most annoying actions in the game. I'm freaking sick of it.

Comps auto summoning, as annoying as it is, is a feature not a bug. I believe it is written in to the code and it's probably pretty hard to go through that mess of spaghetti to un do it. 

1 hour ago, SteveTheCynic said:

I have *never* *ever* seen this happen.  Ever.  I've never seen any complaints here about it either, until you mentioned it.

Yeah, I should be clearer here. It happens most often after logging out and back in, after leaving a vehicle (Iokath), and occasionally when teleporting to a planet. It never happens while I'm out in the world or in combat or something like that.

12 hours ago, TonyTricicolo said:

Comps auto summoning, as annoying as it is, is a feature not a bug. I believe it is written in to the code and it's probably pretty hard to go through that mess of spaghetti to un do it. 

Not really that hard. Put a config option in PREFERENCES to either ALLOW or DENY auto summon of companion.  This is a switch easily done in something as simple as Python, so I don't see how a really big game like this where that is an issue.

14 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

I have *never* *ever* seen this happen.  Ever.  I've never seen any complaints here about it either, until you mentioned it.

IIRC the only time the game enforces a Companion Change is in scripted story elements.

I can't recall it ever happening outside of that specific situation.

All The Best

2 hours ago, Jarbarian said:

Not really that hard. Put a config option in PREFERENCES to either ALLOW or DENY auto summon of companion.  This is a switch easily done in something as simple as Python, so I don't see how a really big game like this where that is an issue.

So that simplicity of inserting the option in the configuration panel (and database) makes you think that it would be easy to *use* the option everywhere it's needed?  Does. Not. Compute.

All the indications are that the SWTOR codebase is a horrible tangled mess of messes, so it's in no way obvious that they'd know *all* the places where the code would need to be changed to make this option work the way it would be needed.

Information for readers who haven't been keeping up: I've been a professional developer(1) since 1989 (no, that's not a typo, I've been doing that job for 34 years!), and I've seen all kinds of mess, especially in old codebases.  A colleague recently dug in our current codebase when looking for ===> that piece of functionality that he could reuse, and found something that has been in the codebase, essentially unaltered, since before 2006 (long story involving migrations between CVS and SVN, where the CVS commit history was lost, and then to git, where the SVN history was not lost), and it was something I didn't even know we had, and I've been in this company for 14 years.

(1) No, not for SWTOR.

7 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

All the indications are that the SWTOR codebase is a horrible tangled mess of messes, so it's in no way obvious that they'd know *all* the places where the code would need to be changed to make this option work the way it would be needed.

 

But that is NOT the players' faults.

That is the fault of poor quality workmanship from the get-go.

The "we stuffed it up on day one, so day 4,000 can't be any better" excuse just is not going to fly... ...ever.

All The Best

21 minutes ago, DarthSpuds said:

But that is NOT the players' faults.

Correct, it is not.

21 minutes ago, DarthSpuds said:

That is the fault of poor quality workmanship from the get-go.

Yes, but that quality shortfall is common in the videogame industry because of insanely short and/or immovable deadlines, and the consequent need to take shortcuts causes problems *later*.

21 minutes ago, DarthSpuds said:

The "we stuffed it up on day one, so day 4,000 can't be any better" excuse just is not going to fly... ...ever.

In my experience, it's everywhere, whether we are talking about videogames, banking applications, or even free-standing network firewalls(1).  The common term for the problems caused now by those shortcuts that we took back then is "technical debt" - we built it like that in the past because it was easier and faster to do (but from a crashiness measure of quality, it's just fine), so now implementing this new variation is harder than it should be to change.

That's the other thing about quality of software - it's a multidimensioned thing, comprising questions of functional quality (does it crash, does it do what it's supposed to, and only that, and so on) and maintainability (is it easy to find where bugs are fixed, is it easy to fix them without breaking a thousand other things, is it easier to change how things work, is it easy to add new functionality, etc.).

(1) Like what I work on.