I would have expanded upon them, expanded their story for all companions not just your first one.

Allow players to have more than 1 companion out etc.

Originally posted by deniter

Originally posted by DavisFlight
I would have left them where they belong, in singleplayer games.

 

It saves multiboxing, and makes game attractive to those who 1) Like to play solo and 2) Can play while friends / guildmates are logged out as if no one on and got no companions then will more likely log off reducing the populations.

If there are loads of people on then you can dismiss them and play with others.

Without companions less people would play as gives less ways to play.

Companions are another TOTAL FAIL.

First, in combat they make me feel weak, because I need them. I can accomplish nothing alone.

Second, it's no real replacement for the classic fantasy party.

Third, it's no replacement for REAL people. NEVER felt so alone in a MMO as in SWTOR.

Fourth and imo most important: they are WAY too pale and hollow. A good companion as in KOTOR or Dragon Age has a lot of story, many dialogues, often intervenes when you chat with NPCs. Alas, the SWTOR companions are mostly just silent followers where sometimes a -1 or +15 pops up. I felt nothing for almost all of them. They were such a letdown.

Why does EVERY stupid, uselsss NPC have to tell us his damn life story, and the companions are most of the time silent? I would rather have 10 times MORE to say from my companion and 10 times LESS to say from useless NPCs. THAT's how I would have done the chat ratio of companions vs npcs.

Originally posted by jpnz

I would have expanded upon them, expanded their story for all companions not just your first one.

Allow players to have more than 1 companion out etc.

I'm not too sure if that would work out well. The game already has enough single player elemants in it. Allowing more companions at one time would negate the need for grouping on Heroics, Flashpoints and Ops.

Originally posted by Elikal

Companions are another TOTAL FAIL.

First, in combat they make me feel weak, because I need them. I can accomplish nothing alone.

Second, it's no real replacement for the classic fantasy party.

Third, it's no replacement for REAL people. NEVER felt so alone in a MMO as in SWTOR.

Fourth and imo most important: they are WAY too pale and hollow. A good companion as in KOTOR or Dragon Age has a lot of story, many dialogues, often intervenes when you chat with NPCs. Alas, the SWTOR companions are mostly just silent followers where sometimes a -1 or +15 pops up. I felt nothing for almost all of them. They were such a letdown.

 

Why does EVERY stupid, uselsss NPC have to tell us his damn life story, and the companions are most of the time silent? I would rather have 10 times MORE to say from my companion and 10 times LESS to say from useless NPCs. THAT's how I would have done the chat ratio of companions vs npcs.

Agree x 1000 to this. Since everybody in my online group of friends are spread out through various games these days we keep in touch by using a vent server so we can at least still talk to each other when we feel like it. Even those of us that were playing TOR tended to stay out of vent because every few minutes someone had to say "Oh hold on cut scene coming up." Very antisocial feature for a game where you are supposed to be interacting with others.

Companions were the same. What I would have liked to see with them is to have them as optional hirelings so if you needed extra help and didn't have someone to group with they were there. Instead of pretty much usurping the place of a lving player. Also it would have been nice to have some areas, instances, battlegrounds, maybe even planetary zones, where you could actually have played as one of your companions. Now that would have been cool.

Originally posted by ignore_me

I wish that the companion gathering missions had been something more than they were. Before I had actually used them I pictured them to be seperate mini adventures that my crew had on their own, and though they might have some interesting consequences (Kira comes back with an artifact that the Sith want to get back, Bowdarr comes back with an advanced tech hyperdrive unit that boosts speed of ship, Mako makes an alliance with the Hutt Cartel, etc.).

 

 

Well, they recently said that one of the upcoming things for this year is more companion stuff to do... hopefully something like this will make it in.

Fingers crossed!

Originally posted by Karteli

It wasn't a good system that way, since companions are untimately tied in to the success of a character.  More companions equates to more virtual goods via missions, and more opportunities to get crafting done in a timely manner.

 

Not having very many companions because a players avatar killed them would only gimp them to the point where on their next character they would play "correctly" and ignore the option to kill, in order to get the correct character build.

 

Now if you could kill them, then resurrect them at a medcenter, only to kill them again later, that might be interesting.  But permanently killing them just for a 30 second one-time cinematic?  That had bad written all over it - I'm glad permadeath was removed.

 

edit: besides resurrecting after being owner-killed, a useful change might be to include a shrink ray-gun or better pathing distance from it's owner.  Nothing more annoying than a huge companion that keeps standing on top of you, or standing on top of stuff you're trying to click on / gather / loot.

 

Could always fix that by filling the empty slots with extra ship droids - or some generic mercenary companion (maybe a scummy Rodian or Trandoshan)  =P

I could see some players killing off all of their companions and replacing them with things like that, either to be "unique" or because they don't care about companions at all.

I personally love mine though, and since my Sith Warrior was a lightsider... it was even in character for him to forgive Quinn, especially since his remorse was genuine, and he originally did it out of loyalty (to someone who didn't deserve it, but hey...).

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by jpnz

I would have expanded upon them, expanded their story for all companions not just your first one.

Allow players to have more than 1 companion out etc.

I'm not too sure if that would work out well. The game already has enough single player elemants in it. Allowing more companions at one time would negate the need for grouping on Heroics, Flashpoints and Ops.

Imagine if.. you can have all of your companions out so you can actually have a 5 man party with just you and your companions!

It'll be... KOTOR3!

/MINDBLOWN!