People who ninja for their companions

Its going to happen, I personally think its pretty lame but thats just my opinion. Unfortunately it was a world boss, this has happened to me in flkashpoints at which point I just leave the group. Leaving the group is usually followed by tells explaining how long said players were LF tank ect ect, I just ecxplain to them that they can blame the person that thinks their "pet" is more important then the other players. Don't lose sleep over it imo theres always going to be greedy people that justify it in their own heads.

Welcome back, JMS. Try not to misrepresent me here, however. Inherently, the notion of passing on gear not specifically designed for your class isn't socialist; on the surface, at least, is isn't anything, since we have no paradigm within which to work. What I did say was that giving up a shot at an upgrade solely because someone else "needed" it "more" was socialist in its implications. It's one reason why attempts to refer back to previous points in an online thread can be so unwieldy: you need to provide context, which makes for massively ballooning post sizes.

In a real-life scenario such as you've posted, where it becomes a potential issue of life or death for a human being, I'm going to not only let them have the bread, I'm likely to offer to take them to the nearest fast food restaurant and purchase them a value meal. I live in a large city here in the U.S., with a fair-sized homeless population that clusters in our downtown core. You can't avoid them as they're panhandling. I've bought such folks meals before because it pleased me to do so.

In this game, you don't have the same considerations. Just as my one sparring partner here, the "bean counter" as he calls himself, might say I don't "need" the upgrade from a FP when quest rewards will suffice, and that this differential should be enough to motivate me to forebearance in favor of another player, I'd say someone in this game doesn't need the upgrade to the point of an "I can't play" scenario, and is mostly just upset that they lost a loot roll to someone else.

But it's pointless to get into minutia like that, because it just gets past the point of being reasonable. It's also largely pointless to draw real-world corollaries, which have applications in a paradigm that includes significant penalties for misbehavior (my aforementioned fiscal/incarceration/death penalties). We have no formalized, ratified set of social mores to draw on here, in a four week-old game whose individual servers are still developing personalities that will hopefully progress over years.

At the end of it all, it comes down to "is it an upgrade?" If so, roll Need, as this is how the system is designed to work. It doesn't hold up under much more scrutiny than that, and hasn't even held up in WoW, where it was largely codified (if not originated as a game-side mechanic) over the long haul, as Blizzard has made recent adjustments to alleviate player concern over improper disbursement of loot in an environment that has even less personal accountability than before in the wake of group content now incorporating server groups instead of individual servers.

If TOR reaches that point, some adjustment may be required. Some adjustment may still be required prior to that point. Upgradeable companions are a completely new paradigm in MMOs, which means BioWare will tick a lot of people off while they work the kinks out of the system. My personal prediction (admittedly sourced in nothing more than gut feeling) is NBG won't last the long haul of this game unless they add class requirements to all FP loot drops and then add a smart-looting companion loot box to each boss' loot table for the players to roll on. But we'll have to wait and see.

This is untrue. If you pull the switch on the bioware servers, where is your gear now?

Lol... its clear that both setanian and eldran are trolls

they are just messing with you guys on the forums cuz they bored.

I guarantee setanian will not need roll on everything in game.

You highlight "pet" as if it is an afterthought by the designers. I'm pretty sure the companion system, and the ability to gear it is unique to MMO genre. As such it becomes more than just a pet. It is an extension of your character.

Attempting to level from 1-50 without would be do-able, but only the masochists would try

You have no idea who I am, where I am, anything else about me, yet you can guarantee stuff like this.

Do you have whole religions worshipping your powers too?

That is your response?


k.

That would be even worse!

It has to be like WoW did it, with only being able to need on gear that fits your class.

It's become pretty clear to me from this maelstrom of opinions (there are at least three different threads going on about this) that the best thing for BioWare to do is to implement loot tokens. It robs the game of the traditional RPG flavor, but it's their fault for not thinking through this system of modded gear and companions.

Each boss should drop a token for every player character involved in the encounter, as well as a "supertoken" that could be rolled for by everyone. The supertoken could then be exchanged for an item on a 1 for 1 basis, and a range of other items of varying quality could be purchased with the regular tokens.

There, now you've taken greed, ninjas, whatever, all out of the equation. Why the heck not?

Why is it worse?

it has been proven that the more you offer, the more greedy players become. The only thing 'need' does is inform others that you need the item.

This has fostered the whole "you don't need it more than me" type arguments and this one, you cannot (like anyone can dictate) need for your companion.

Players somehow believe that they as a player have more right to the loot than my companion if they press 'need'.

By removing the 'need' option. It is a completely fair and level playing field. If you roll and you win great, if you roll and lose, there is next time.

It does not have to be like how wow did it at all. Because how wow did it suits your argument, does not make it fact.