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Companion Issues


EricMusco

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Hey folks,

 

One of the things that has come up quite a bit since 5.10 is a number of Companion issues. I posted yesterday letting you know that one of the more prominent issues (ranged companions not attacking) was likely going to be fixed in 6.0. What I wanted to do was make a bit of a bigger post explaining what these issues are, their current status, and when they are likely to be fixed. Let’s dive in.

 

Ranged Companions Not Attacking

This issue is a bit of an interesting case. The common belief is that this is a bug which was introduced in 5.10. That is understandable since it certainly became more noticeable with that update. However, this issue has actually been around since launch. After the reports we received from 5.10 we began doing a deep dive into what was going on. That is where we discovered a pretty substantial issue with how Companions were built which is causing this to happen. Due to this being an underlying issue with all Companions it requires a larger systemic change then just a standard bug fix which is the reason why the fix is taking so long.

 

An update from yesterday, I was being conservative in saying that it will be fixed for 6.0. Upon double checking with the team they believe that it may actually make it in before then in 5.10.4 in the summer. This is of course still dependent on testing and verification, but you may see it before 6.0 after all.

 

Companion Ineffectiveness / Imbalance

One of the other issues that we hear about is that some Companions are ineffective in specific roles or imbalanced compared to other Companions. For 6.0 the team is making a full pass across all Companions to make a variety of updates. Most notably to address this very imbalance, update abilities, and more.

 

Companions are a critical part of SWTOR and so we take issues with them very seriously. We know that sometimes changes don’t come as quick as you would like but know that we are working to get these types of issues resolved as fast as we can! We thank you for all of the reports around these issues as they were very helpful in isolating the root causes to work towards addressing them. And of course, thank you for your patience as we work to get them resolved.

 

Thanks everyone!

 

-eric

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Thanks for the info Eric. While we're on the topic of companions, any word on them getting their unique abilities back? i.e. Blizz's rocket launcher? There's a few others I just can't remember them off the top of my head.
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Companion Ineffectiveness / Imbalance

One of the other issues that we hear about is that some Companions are ineffective in specific roles or imbalanced compared to other Companions. For 6.0 the team is making a full pass across all Companions to make a variety of updates. Most notably to address this very imbalance, update abilities, and more.

 

This is good news, but like most folks, I'm always willing to push things a little further.

 

When the team is doing its full pass for 6.0... is there ANY way that some of the original companions can get some of their original abilities restored? I know most people will cite HK-51's classic "assassinate" ability, but there were several others that were unique to certain characters in their classic roles, abilities that made those characters even more fun to play. (Ensign Temple had a minor force ability, as I recall.) If you're taking the time... might you restore some of those companion specific abilities to the proper role? Can Lokin turn into a rakghoul again?

 

These companions without some of their character abilities would be like Tharan Cedrax finally returning but unable to use Holiday. Is that why he's still gone?

 

I get that some characters might have different abilities post Eternal Empire... Guss Tuno having finally expanded his Jedi skills via story makes sense to now have Jedi abilities instead of his old smuggler-esque skills. But our other, beloved companions.. we miss some of the things that made them feel unique. I'm sure other forum members can list desirable abilities we'd love to see return better than I can.

 

In addition... I don't know the WHY behind it, but can you re-wire our companion's mouths to once again MOVE when they're speaking? It's a minor thing, but it's so immersion breaking to have a favorite companion look like a walking mannequin and talk without moving their mouths. What if we say "please" a LOT?

 

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Thanks for the info Eric. While we're on the topic of companions, any word on them getting their unique abilities back? i.e. Blizz's rocket launcher? There's a few others I just can't remember them off the top of my head.

 

:ph_agree: Is this "great minds think alike" time? :sy_item::sy_lightside:

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What I wanted to do was make a bit of a bigger post explaining what these issues are, their current status, and when they are likely to be fixed.

Thanks, I have been curious about the causes of these issues. Your explanation makes a lot more sense than the idea that some sudden recent change had caused everything but you somehow couldn't just undo the change and restore things to how they were before.

 

At the same time... while I comprehend everything you've said... I very much do experience the bug as a recent thing. Until Ossus companions used to follow my characters around corners to find their targets, or would run to join my character if they were too far away. Now they do neither. I appreciate what you're saying, it's just hard to understand how this can be an issue since launch when it only seems to manifest itself this severely more recently.

 

Still, even if it makes little sense from the player perspective, it's good to get any insights into why things are the way they are. It helps us to understand why you make the decisions that you do.

 

When the team is doing its full pass for 6.0... is there ANY way that some of the original companions can get some of their original abilities restored?

 

In addition... I don't know the WHY behind it, but can you re-wire our companion's mouths to once again MOVE when they're speaking?

Agreed on both fronts. :)

Edited by Estelindis
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Thanks, I have been curious about the causes of these issues. Your explanation makes a lot more sense than the idea that some sudden recent change had caused everything but you somehow couldn't just undo the change and restore things to how they were before.

 

At the same time... while I comprehend everything you've said... I very much do experience the bug as a recent thing. Until Ossus companions used to follow my characters around corners to find their targets, or would run to join my character if they were too far away. Now they do neither. I appreciate what you're saying, it's just hard to understand how this can be an issue since launch when it only seems to manifest itself this severely more recently.

 

Still, even if it makes little sense from the player perspective, it's good to get any insights into why things are the way they are. It helps us to understand why you make the decisions that you do.

 

 

Agreed on both fronts. :)

 

I'd say my experience is the opposite of yours. Long before 5.10 I would notice that ranged companions especially would often NOT follow their targets if they got too far away or out of line of sight and ranged healing companions would not move closer to heal you if you got out of range. It seemed be kind of sporadic though ... sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn't. It just seemed to become worse more recently.

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The common belief is that this is a bug which was introduced in 5.10. That is understandable since it certainly became more noticeable with that update. However, this issue has actually been around since launch. After the reports we received from 5.10 we began doing a deep dive into what was going on. That is where we discovered a pretty substantial issue with how Companions were built which is causing this to happen. Due to this being an underlying issue with all Companions it requires a larger systemic change then just a standard bug fix which is the reason why the fix is taking so long.

 

 

Eric, thank you for the update but two sources of concern.

 

1) It was much more pronounced in 5.10 -- but why? You say the issue has been around since launch, but I didn't notice it before 5.10. Like Estelindis said above, why did it become so much more noticeable in 5.10?

 

2) As others have pointed out -- it's not just range -- it impacts Melee LoS as well. In other words, even if they are 10m away, if an object or corner is between the companion and the bad monster, they will not respond to commands. As Yoda is my witness, that was not the case before 5.10.

 

I had not experienced (well, noticed) what one poster said about Vibrosword-using companions. Regardless, I'm happy you are doing a full review on companions for 6.0 so that there is some degree of equity (i.e., Treek not sucking and Shae not being overpowered).

 

Dasty

Edited by Jdast
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I'd say my experience is the opposite of yours. Long before 5.10 I would notice that ranged companions especially would often NOT follow their targets if they got too far away or out of line of sight and ranged healing companions would not move closer to heal you if you got out of range. It seemed be kind of sporadic though ... sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn't. It just seemed to become worse more recently.

Thanks, it's good to hear that others have had different experiences. Helps to make sense of it all! :)

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I'd say my experience is the opposite of yours. Long before 5.10 I would notice that ranged companions especially would often NOT follow their targets if they got too far away or out of line of sight and ranged healing companions would not move closer to heal you if you got out of range. It seemed be kind of sporadic though ... sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn't. It just seemed to become worse more recently.

 

My experience is that is has been there for a while, it was on and off again from about 2.0 onward, but it became a constant after 4.0 (when they screwed up companions). So for me its always been a issue since 4.0. (Which coincidentally, is when they made the largest change in the game coding to date, which also caused many other issues ingame and across the entire game, some of which still havnt been fixed.)

 

It is fun to read the patch notes and see what bugs got fixed, because half of them I have encountered myself or a fried has and the other half im sitting there going "What? That was a bug?! lol I never ran into that issue lol." So its fun :D

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I appreciate the update on this, Eric. There are favorite companions that I just don't use right now because I can't count on them responding.

 

I'd like to corroborate that this isn't just ranged companions, though. It's markedly worse with ranged companions, but I've also personally had experiences with melee companions like Lana, Nadia and Akaavi going into lala land, hanging back and not following/attacking/healing. It's random and as I've said it doesn't happen the way it does with ranged companions, but it does happen.

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I used to catch this sporadically with Vette, on my first SW. It was either that, or waiting until she could last hit everything, so I spent a lot of time cussing her out. For a frame of reference, I started right about the time RotHC went live. I've only seen it once in the last couple of weeks, and it was, of course, on Vette, on the same SW... So I figured she was just mad at me for taking an extended vacation... :o
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I must have written close to a dozen tickets about a different Companion bug not mentioned here, and I keep getting told that it will be fixed in a coming update. This was many, many, many updates ago. Yet I get the same response.

 

Ever since we were able to get our companions back through story, their mouths dont work. If I get a companion back through the Odessen alliance base, before they are released through story, their mouths work. But the second I get them back through story, their mouths no longer work.

 

Im pretty disillusioned to have read the update on companion issues with not a single mention about this. Responses to my countless tickets on this have assured me that the developers are aware of this and will fix it soon. But I have been told this for probably three years now. It's really been that long. Reading the post simply lets me know, there is no interest at all in fixing this issue ever in the new future.

 

So is this really the case for those of us with broken companion animations? Are we really not getting this fixed?

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Hey folks,

 

One of the things that has come up quite a bit since 5.10 is a number of Companion issues. I posted yesterday letting you know that one of the more prominent issues (ranged companions not attacking) was likely going to be fixed in 6.0. What I wanted to do was make a bit of a bigger post explaining what these issues are, their current status, and when they are likely to be fixed. Let’s dive in.

 

Ranged Companions Not Attacking

This issue is a bit of an interesting case. The common belief is that this is a bug which was introduced in 5.10. That is understandable since it certainly became more noticeable with that update. However, this issue has actually been around since launch. After the reports we received from 5.10 we began doing a deep dive into what was going on. That is where we discovered a pretty substantial issue with how Companions were built which is causing this to happen. Due to this being an underlying issue with all Companions it requires a larger systemic change then just a standard bug fix which is the reason why the fix is taking so long.

 

An update from yesterday, I was being conservative in saying that it will be fixed for 6.0. Upon double checking with the team they believe that it may actually make it in before then in 5.10.4 in the summer. This is of course still dependent on testing and verification, but you may see it before 6.0 after all.

 

Companion Ineffectiveness / Imbalance

One of the other issues that we hear about is that some Companions are ineffective in specific roles or imbalanced compared to other Companions. For 6.0 the team is making a full pass across all Companions to make a variety of updates. Most notably to address this very imbalance, update abilities, and more.

 

Companions are a critical part of SWTOR and so we take issues with them very seriously. We know that sometimes changes don’t come as quick as you would like but know that we are working to get these types of issues resolved as fast as we can! We thank you for all of the reports around these issues as they were very helpful in isolating the root causes to work towards addressing them. And of course, thank you for your patience as we work to get them resolved.

 

Thanks everyone!

 

-eric

 

Hmmm, this issue might have been somewhere under the hood "since launch", as a possible cause for this issue we have now, but it had basically no effect and was not "active" so to say. So this explanation is kinda or actually more than fishy.

Fact is, this critical issue was awaken to life with 5.10 in December, 5 months ago, and again, should have been fixed 5 months ago - 3 days. There were no effective issues before or maybe below the 0.1 % mark for a handful of people every now and then. Since December it's 100 % active for everyone all of the time...just for a reality check Eric. :-)

Edited by Khaleg
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Companion Ineffectiveness / Imbalance

One of the other issues that we hear about is that some Companions are ineffective in specific roles or imbalanced compared to other Companions. For 6.0 the team is making a full pass across all Companions to make a variety of updates. Most notably to address this very imbalance, update abilities, and more.

 

I'm excited about this specifically. I do HOPE it isn't going to reduce the effectiveness of current companions but rather add reasons to use specific ones or ever archetypes if they're plentiful. If Shae all of a sudden becomes what say, Mako is today, I'm not interested.

 

Lokin turn into a rakghoul again?

 

He still can, just in DPS stance but I haven't checked the others in a little while.

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I believe the issue became more noticeable because the companions are usually lagging behind. A long time ago when I was playing more regularly, companions would consistently be running by your side unless there was a latency spike. These days though I noticed they can't seem to keep up and just sporadically appear next to you.

 

Even if the companions weren't able to move since launch but because they were next to you when you start combat they would often also be in range so it didn't matter as much. Now, when combat is initiated, they could be several rooms and a hallway behind.

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Hmmm, this issue might have been somewhere under the hood "since launch", as a possible cause for this issue we have now, but it had basically no effect and was not "active" so to say. So this explanation is kinda or actually more than fishy.

It was active. I noticed a while back that ranged companions in heal mode (or pre-4.0 ranged heal companions like Elara, Tharan or Doc) would not follow me to heal if I went out of their heal range and there was an attackable foe within the companion's attack range.

 

For clarity: Doc is here. 25 metres from Doc (inside shooting range) there's a foe. I'm eight metres beyond the foe and I need healing. Doc would not move to heal me. If one of us kills that foe, and the next in-combat foe is two metres beyond me (so 35 from Doc) he would move in range of at least me.

 

What happened more recently is that they won't move even when there are no targets in range and line of sight.

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Eric Musco,

 

The companions not attacking is not isolated to just range companions, the issue is far greater than just companions too occasional your own character will stop, pause and or continue to apply its ability long after you stop pressing the associated keys and or clicking the mouse.

 

The problem too relate to cut scenes when chatting I believe its combination of interference by ISP providers upgrading there service to Windows updates and to service interruption that is leading to some server issues that's corrupts the characters and companion movements as the game records the last input to the servers from the end users online gaming and if there is a disruption that has to be record within the game play like any other application and software issue,

 

I am not making a complaint but to say companions not attacking has been around since launch should have been address back in 2012 then when you were suspending people for abnormal game play where end users did report matters that there system were experience strange activities.

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Thanks for the info Eric. While we're on the topic of companions, any word on them getting their unique abilities back? i.e. Blizz's rocket launcher? There's a few others I just can't remember them off the top of my head.

 

I will second this. At least with SOME of the companions, i.e. the old ones. I mean they have been around the most and people have very personal relationship to them.

 

Also, it's been mentioned elsewhere, but can't bring it up often enough, please look into the bug where Felix Iresso and Zenith use both each other's lines while in the Healing mode. It seemingly has been around for ages and nobody seems to have done anything about it.

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Ever since we got the ability to the choose our companions' roles, they've been using the wrong voices for said roles. Tanking companions spouting healer lines and vice versa. If you're honestly going to fix something for a change, could you address this while you're at it?

 

Please?

 

Pretty please?

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I will second this. At least with SOME of the companions, i.e. the old ones. I mean they have been around the most and people have very personal relationship to them.

 

Also, it's been mentioned elsewhere, but can't bring it up often enough, please look into the bug where Felix Iresso and Zenith use both each other's lines while in the Healing mode. It seemingly has been around for ages and nobody seems to have done anything about it.

 

Just thought to add this, but I've heard Zenith's lines on Felix when he's in tanking or DPS-mode too.

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