Companions Ruin the Game

You can open the character quick slot bar and turn on or off the abilities. You can also manually trigger them, by default with ctrl-# binds. The companion quick slot will cover up one of your bars though, but you can change which one in preferences.

As someone else pointed out the setup can change as you zone, although I have had very little issues personally.

There's a selectable UI option that will include a comparison of your companions's stats when you hover your mouse over e piece of gear. Same way it does fo your gear by default.

I tried a healer in beta and swore I will never play on in this game as one. Try DPS in this game. Its night and day from a playability and fun factor.

The companions are fine. You need to be grouping in that high level content. If you aren't grouped doing quests at that point and trying to solo the game of course its going to be hard.

So far I heard a DPS complain at level 47 his NPC tank stinks and a healer that his DPS/Tank NPC stinks....

Ya...

Get a IRL player. I think that is what guilds are for. So is just spamming on a planet. Anyone want to do Tatooine quests? You just run around completing them.

It is faceroll easy with 2 players and 2 companions through tatooine. We did search and rescue 4+ heroic with 3 last night and 1 healer companion.

I have not had any problem with quests as a smuggler dps. I am not saying anyone is doing anything wrong, but honestly if you group you won't struggle as much. This is still a MMO. I think grouping is good. Solo play honestly is not something you should be doing at the last 5 levels in any mmo imo. It should be hard. You shouldn't struggle in a MMO to find guildies willing to help quest the last 5 levels. Below that? Eh... solo play is necessary, but honestly find a good guild.

This has got to be a joke post. Its pretty well documented on the smuggler forum that Bowdaar is nearly useless, even when geared appropriately. He has some loyal defenders, but the overwhelming majority find him more of a liability.

Why anyone would be using him at 50 is beyond me.

Love companions, but I loved ME and ME2 as well, so I knew what to expect.

Not at all. All you said was this game does not have enough people playing roflcopter.

Don't be obtuse.

A heal spec player is supposed to rely on people being on the same quest he's on and playing at the same time he's playing in order to be able to progress in the game? Bioware did its best to encourage grouping with 2+ and 4 player heroic missions. But you think the non-DPS specs should suffer the grind for solo PVE missions?

There aren't enough people on a given planet or on a given set of quests to support even the basic tenets of your simplistic theory that players should be grouping up to do all quests. Or am I misreading your original comment?

I think that companions make the game difficult to balance. I find that the game has two difficulty settings, to use old game references, if I have my companions along, it's like I'm on "mommy can I play?" difficulty. . .and if I keep them off doing other things so I can truly solo, it's more like "bring the pain". I tend to prefer the latter and keep my companion banished at almost all times. I know that BW has had companions in nearly every major game they made so it's kinda their calling card. . .but I think they detract from the game. I suppose their input in story points is refreshing, but I really don't like having them attached to the game.

Major points:

1) They make balancing difficulty problematic. Two relatively potent combatants are exponentially stronger than one single combatant with better stats, they have separate cool-downs, can focus on separate things, and add in exploiting the fact that one of the pair is controlled by very exploitable AI and entirely expendable. . .it makes the game either too easy or the devs have to magnify challenges to the point where you HAVE to make maximum use of all those exploits just to stay alive. So, reason one the game would be better without them is it would be easier to balance the challenge level of the setting.

2) The companions do all the crafting and gathering. For people who don't normally craft or gather in other mmos, I'm guessing this is a plus. . .but a large number of players, myself included, actually like having an active hand in crafting. As it is, the only real way to craft is to send your companion off to do it while you knock out the less challenging fights in the game, or while you are mostly afk doing other things and just want to stop in periodically to refill their que. I'd prefer to have crafting be an actual part of the game I could participate in, and don't really like that it's mostly 'dispatch control'.

3) Companions give pains in the keesters pseudo-legitimate reasons to roll Need on EVERYTHING that drops in an instance. . .as some member of their cast can use it, and it seems that a decent portion of the game's players don't feel like a competent adventurer unless their companion is helping. . .this refers back to reason 1, but also. . .those players that are not any good without their companion. . .aren't they a detriment to the party when they're in a full party and their crutch isn't allowed to tag along?

4) The companion personalities are nowhere near flexible enough. My BH and Smuggler both were gonna be underhanded bastards. . .but that apparently doesn't mesh with the almost Jedi-level moral code that your only starting companion seems to have. Why not let people pick out of a couple opening choices who they want to hang out with? If you're going to force people to have companions and rely upon them for adventuring AND crafting. . .at least let us pick someone who's personality meshes with the character we want to play from the beginning.

So, in general, while I didn't quite get the OP's point in the text of his post, I do agree with the Thread Title.

The fact is that Companion AI needs some SERIOUS tweaking. Right now they most companions are as dumb as a box of rocks, and some are almost liabilities.

I sympathize with the OP. We're supposed to be these galactic a_skickers and yet here we are, dependent on an NPC that has all the mental function of a turnip. Replying to one poster above, yes, fighting should be a challenge, but good grief. Everything doesn't need to be this tedious, protracted battle. Did Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon have a hard time taking on hordes of droids? No, they went though them like a fat chick at a buffet. Not us though, no, if we don't use every trick in the book, every time, we're a grease spot for the cleaners. Apparently, they don't make enemies like they used to, if Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan tried their antics in "our" SW universe, they'd of been dead in 5 minutes.