No one bothers to use the search function anymore. The Beauty of Rage.

With these changes, I think I'll stay out of pvp for some time. Stick to dailies and weeklies with the occasional flashpoint/raid. Well I'll pvp as a Sage/Sorc healer, cuz daaaaaaamn.

To piggy back off your response. I think that's one of the things I like about this game. There are many options to provide people of different playstyles with different challenges. It allows ways to shape the game to your pace. It's sort of a silly conundrum. You can make the game as difficult in every aspect as you wish on the daily grind by just using the plethora of influence 1 companions you can obtain, walk around with companions with half abilities disabled etc... But then the "elite" player complains how the game should be hard by default, rather than giving players the choices to cater the game to themselves. While the nerf of last week simply made some simple tasks almost impossible. Especially for the casual gamer with limited time on their hands. That's the gist of my complaint. I think the patch today made companions good again. Not too OP so there is a bit of challenge and you're not just in God Mode, but strong enough to make the daily grind easy for the casual or time limited players. Or just the ones who want to expedite the mundane grind. But players like the one you quoted don't seem to like choice. Which is so weird to make. We actually have choices in this game, outside of just rocking ****** gear or removing a piece of gear.

Not sure why. All companions provide is some help for solo content and otherwise grindy aspects of the game. The real rewards of the game are locked behind group content. The real meat can't be obtained where companions are available.

I tend to be a very optimistic and positive guy, and I know Eric means well, but Bioware just has a terrible track record in listening and handling information. I hope a middle ground solution does come out of this thread, I do miss the companions actually being useful. It's just when it comes to communication, Bioware is hands down the worst game developer in keeping their fans/playerbase in the loop, in my gaming experience.

Agreed. Blizzard has made some questionable design decisions, granted, but what MMO doesn't. Plus, it's such an old mmo, and they've manage to make it work this long. With such a long life span, of course some people will be worn out, grow nostalgic, be frustrated. But the hate Blizzard gets is certainly not warranted.

True. I personally like the changes for the upcoming expansion. WoW has it faults sure, but I enjoy the communication between the development team and the player base. I know everyone is getting worked up right now, with good reason, but I never understand the full frontal hate WoW gets. Blizzard makes tons of changes, but at least they play around with ideas, and adjust slowly rather than major swings.

Thank you for the input, made an account and gonna give it a try. I played it for very little at launch through a friend's account, but at the time I had a crappy "gaming laptop". So everything I touched sucked lol. Looking at some videos, the game looks impressive. The art style is definitely an acquired taste, but I can overlook it. I'm seeing some dynamic armor, and that's all I need.

Add in, a group that lets me scavenge mobs for mats without yelling profanities, attempting to kick me from group, or spitefully running ahead and pulling boss.

Can you go into more detail on the level cap? I know Guild Wars 2 gets praised for not raising the level cap and getting rid of the race to max and raid grind that all mmo's suffer through. What is there to do at max? Especially with new patches?

Hmm.. weird. FFXIV is always praised for having one of the most friendly communities in any mmo currently. OT: No idea OP. There are so many mmo's but so many are poop. Sure not every mmo will have everything you want, but at least for me personally, too many cons.

I like being able to choose to play how I want. Not having to deal with other players who are slow, or belligerent. I left to social aspects to ranked and ops. I knew the companions were OP, but incremental nerfs would have made sense. That's what irritating about all this. Bioware doesn't know what a middle ground is. Still waiting for the game to patch, but so far, I'm not like what I'm hearing.

I don't... what.... I don't understand what you're even talking about lol. First of all, MMO is just a massive multiplayer online game. It just means a ton of people, what you do with those people is up to the user. Nowhere does it imply that groups of social basement dwellers have to come together to smell each other. This is why I hate posting on these forums, people like you make it seem like there is only one avenue of perspective. "Hurrr, well it's an mmo, so social!" The game can allow some solo content. Hell, there are achievements geared towards doing certain content by yourself to show how well you can manage on your own. No one here is implying to remove all social aspects or group content. No matter what, the best rewards when it comes to MMOs can only be achieved through group content. The best gear and rewards in general are locked behind it. As it should be. I'm here talking about totally normal grindy pve aspects. Whether it be farming companion influence through an old FP, heroics, etc... The minimal basic reward for entry level players. 2 very separate beasts. There are tons of people who just play the story and grind out basic comms and go for cosmetic stuff. And if they want to keep progressing, then they have to do group content. No one here is fighting to make ops soloable with companions or anything of the like. A slight play with numbers would have been more well received that a flat out 75% drop. That doesn't make sense. All people are arguing is being able to play how they want, which did not affect group content. It was a solution that catered to everyone and allowed multiple ways to play the game how you chose, especially those with minimal time to play. So save me the "friends of the world through in game whispers" nonsense. Also, SWG is dead. Get the **** over it lol.

Here's my gripe. Yes, companions were overpowered. Definitely. Agreed. But Bioware has this horrendous tendency to go too little, or too much. There is never a middle ground with these guys. Companions were OP by some weird oversight. Seems like they don't test much internally. So play around with numbers, do increments, don't swing the hammer and knock the head clean off. I wouldn't mind if they nerfed them and kept them at a reasonable output for soloing purposes, considering most of endgame right now consists of farming heroic 2s. How is it that people with companions at influence 30+ are having problems doing simple grinds. This is asinine. And in come the "Ultra Pro Mega Challenge" players yelling about how this is an MMORPG. *** does that even mean? You'd have a point if people were running ops with companions along with hard mode flashpoints and the like. We're talking about regular old content. Grinding. It's such a ridiculous argument that playing the "Cooldowns" game is much more fun on simple grinding tasks. It's already bad enough that the level sync is forced on us. Now we have companions back to being pretty ornaments we carry around for repeated dialogue whenever they fling their sticks. The actually useful companions gave the players the option to do things by themselves. The players who work late. The ones who have limited time to play. Who don't play at peak hours. How is solo basic play affecting the ultra elite? THAT'S my issue with all this. With Bioware, it's all or nothing. There is no balance. No middle ground. Only absolutes.

Too much salt for my taste.