I had purchased several armor sets for each of my main characters, so I was going to give my companions armor I collect from planets during the vanilla campaign. However, whenever a cutscene starts, the appearance of the armor changes. Example, if I give a Trooper armor set you get from Voss, to one of the Trooper companions, during a cutscene, whether it's talking to them or not, the armor changes to look like something a bounty hunter would wear. Edited January 22, 2019 by ColvaCelestia

I had purchased several armor sets for each of my main characters, so I was going to give my companions armor I collect from planets during the vanilla campaign. However, whenever a cutscene starts, the appearance of the armor changes. Example, if I give a Trooper armor set you get from Voss, to one of the Trooper companions, during a cutscene, whether it's talking to them or not, the armor changes to look like something a bounty hunter would wear.

Yes, that's a bug introduced in, I believe, 5.0. If an armour piece has different looks on Imp and Pub characters, such as the Boltblaster set you mention (Bounty Hunters also get Boltblaster armour in similar circumstances), companions will wear their "home" faction's appearance in normal play, and the "enemy" faction's appearance in cutscenes.

 

Caveat lector: It might be the player's home faction rather than the companion's. This distinction becomes important later in the story.

 

Exception: Lana Beniko is a Sith. Her natural "home faction" is, therefore, the Empire. Regardless of the player's home faction, in normal play she wears the Republic appearance, switching to the Imperial appearance in cutscenes.

 

EDIT: Lana's resistance to wearing Imp-style looks is somewhat frustrating, since I have one character who wears "Charged Hypercloth Force-Expert's" armour (requires-level-61 Synthweaving set), and I'd really like her to be able to make a set for Lana so the two of them can go around looking like that, but of course when Lana wears it, it comes out as the Pub-side version, which looks moderately lame, especially the helmet.

Edited January 22, 2019 by SteveTheCynic

And why haven't they fixed that if it was introduced so long ago?

And why haven't they fixed that if it was introduced so long ago?

 

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

 

Seriously, they need to get to fixing a lot of bugs, some of them pretty major.

And why haven't they fixed that if it was introduced so long ago?

Because it only affects visuals. It doesn't stop companions following you properly (a different bug does that), nor does it stop your companion healing you properly (another different bug does that) and so on. This one is purely visual.

 

That makes it low priority, so it's at the back of the bug-fix queue. There are actual game-play and storytelling bugs that are as old as the game and still haven't been fixed. Search "Taris Bonus Series" some time... (for better results, use the advanced search available by clicking the Search button without any text, where you can specify to search in the text of posts rather than just in thread titles.)

And why haven't they fixed that if it was introduced so long ago?

 

Conspiracy theory: It's all about the Cartel Market.

 

Visuals are important to storyplayers and Cartel Market armor has no pub/imp appearance differences. They want story-players to ignore the in-game gear and just buy cartel armor for all their companions.