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Changes coming to companions in 4.0

This stuff is retroactive:
- Companion effectiveness is going to be based upon the player character level (Presence stat and Influence) and not their gears. Gear will be cosmetic for those that can wear it.
- All companion will be able to fulfill the 3 roles (tank, dps, healer)
- Companion lose their crafting bonuses, now it's all influence based.
- Affection is renamed Influence and work a bit differently

The first two should have been in the game a long time ago. It's super annoying, unless you are a Trooper, to gear you companions for their roles every few levels.

Thanks for the info. One thing I'm wondering about with all this is the Presence stat. Up to now it really did not matter much and the bonus you got from each character who finished their class mission was nice to have at best.
With this change I'm wondering if it won't put people at a major or maybe even unbalancing advantage who have actually ground out all eight classes?
What are they trying to do here? Are they trying to encourage people to play through all eight class missions? If so will the 12x XP bonus persist past patch 4.0? Or is all of this moot because there will no longer be a Presence bonus for each finished class mission?
 
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If so will the 12x XP bonus persist past patch 4.0?

I read that they were working toward something similar to that, but no details. Probably an entire gear/XP rebalance of the leveling system.

I expect the new system to be balanced for both Influence and Presence...well as much as something can be balanced.
 
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I expect the new system to be balanced for both Influence and Presence…well as much as something can be balanced.

Yep. Well, they better give it a pretty good overhaul now that every companion is going to be exactly the same :) .
I just checked in-game and you actually get a +10 presence bonus for every single companion so 8 classes x 5 companions x 10 presence = +400 presence if you play through all eight class missions/companion stories.
The max possible Presence bonus seems to be +910 according to this thread so if they turn Presence into an important companion stat then grinding through every single class will be rewarded quite generously.

However, I'm not so sure it's fair that e.g. if you have zero interest in ever finishing the Sith Marauder or Republic Trooper storylines you will never have a chance to even come close to maxing your companion.
Prior to patch 4.0 you could mitigate this via gear with Presence boni only being the cherry on top but with gear entirely removed from the equation hmmm....

It will be interesting to see how effective a fully maxed companion (all eight classes + all datacrons) is going to be vs. a "typical" average companion of someone who has maxed between one and three classes and only has a dozen or so datacrons. I really hope they get the balance right.
With Presence becoming as important as it sounds, everyone who has not gone through the crazy grind of all eight class missions plus collecting all the datacrons on their main character(s) is going to be at a serious disadvantage.
 
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Yeah! I'm done with the class quests. I've done all eight of them. Some were a real drag (Sith Warrior/Smuggler), but others were really fun (Trooper, Imperial Agent and Bounty Hunter).

I don't think I would have been able to do this without the 12x, even with the accelerated XP each storyline was between 20 and 30 hours.
 
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Yeah! I'm done with the class quests. I've done all eight of them. Some were a real drag (Sith Warrior/Smuggler), but others were really fun (Trooper, Imperial Agent and Bounty Hunter).

I don't think I would have been able to do this without the 12x, even with the accelerated XP each storyline was between 20 and 30 hours.

20/30 hours? How about if you take out the travelling? :)
 
20/30 hours? How about if you take out the travelling? :)

I consider travel negligible with all the fast travel perks and automated speeder point unlocked, I avoided none quest mobs when possible as well and I always went straight for the quest objectives. Travel only happened inside of the quest zone (I used rocket boosters if there was no mobs) or from the automated speeder to the quest zone (used my speeder).

The quest zone was usually less than a minute from the automated speeder. There are 4 quests per planets, 16 full planets and 3 return to mission + the mission on Quesh. So ~68 minutes of travel time on that amount. Some of the quest mission takes more time than that because of the horde of mobs they contains (the Jedi Knight is the winner for that, the last mission takes like 2 hours and I fast tracked the cutscenes by that point).

I did not fast track the cutscenes (most of the time) though.
 
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I consider travel negligible with all the fast travel perks and automated speeder point unlocked, I avoided none quest mobs when possible as well and I always went straight for the quest objectives. Travel only happened inside of the quest zone (I used rocket boosters if there was no mobs) or from the automated speeder to the quest zone (used my speeder).

The quest zone was usually less than a minute from the automated speeder. There are 4 quests per planets, 16 full planets and 3 return to mission + the mission on Quesh. So ~68 minutes of travel time on that amount. Some of the quest mission takes more time than that because of the horde of mobs they contains (the Jedi Knight is the winner for that, the last mission takes like 2 hours and I fast tracked the cutscenes by that point).

I did not fast track the cutscenes (most of the time) though.

Interesting, as I played exactly the same way the last time I tried it - rocket boots and all.

I did appreciate the fast travel convenience - but it really felt like the story was very short. It felt like I was rushing through it.

I also think it became extra apparent how all the primary quests seem to end in exactly the same way, as in with a fight between you and a yellow-rated mob and perhaps a couple of silver-mobs.

I just couldn't get into that kind of predictable story-telling.

Maybe I should give it another chance, if there's really that much story in it.
 
Class quest in themselves can be very short. I've seen some on the Smuggler that takes like 5 minutes (I'm pretty sure it is the shortest class story, almost no fighting). You spend between 40 minutes to 1.5 hour per full planets (I rarely had to re-issue buffs that last one hour per planet).

As for predictability, yeah everyone is basically following a formula in term of presentation. I usually limited my play time to one planet per day and took a week to two week break between classes.

Also, there is an order the classes stories happens, from memory and the cross references I remember:

Bounty Hunter
Jedi Knight
Sith Warrior
Smuggler
Imperial Agent
Sith Inquisitor
Consular
Trooper is dead last

The Sith Inquisitor and Consular might be inverted, they don't cross reference each others.
 
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Class quest in themselves can be very short. I've seen some on the Smuggler that takes like 5 minutes (I'm pretty sure it is the shortest class story, almost no fighting). You spend between 40 minutes to 1.5 hour per full planets (I rarely had to re-issue buffs that last one hour per planet).

As for predictability, yeah everyone is basically following a formula in term of presentation. I usually limited my play time to one planet per day and took a week to two week break between classes.

Also, there is an order the classes stories happens, from memory and the cross references I remember:

Bounty Hunter
Jedi Knight
Sith Warrior
Smuggler
Imperial Agent
Sith Inquisitor
Consular
Trooper is dead last

The Sith Inquisitor and Consular might be inverted, they don't cross reference each others.

When you say "per planet" are you talking about side quests? Because that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about class quests exclusively.

You said 20-30 hour storylines for each, so I thought we were talking about unique content.

The side quests are identical for all classes on each side, so I'd rather kill myself than go though them with all characters :)
 
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I'm talking about unique class content. You get 4 class quests per planets most of the time and there is 16 planets setup that way (Quesh has one or two depending on the class). On top of that there is what I would call the mid-chapter class quest and the end of chapter quest (so 6 more quests), both of these will either send you back to an already visited planet or to a unique ship/space station.

A class storyline is ~72 quests.
 
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I'm talking about unique class content. You get 4 class quests per planets most of the time and there is 16 planets setup that way (Quesh has one or two depending on the class). On top of that there is what I would call the mid-chapter class quest and the end of chapter quest (so 6 more quests), both of these will either send you back to an already visited planet or to a unique ship/space station.

A class storyline is ~72 quests.

Ah, ok. Thanks for clarifying ;)
 
Some more news about the update that come with the next expac. Mostly "quality of life" stuff.

Combat Changes:
There is stat changes coming
They copied GW2 level scaling
The Companion stuff was mentioned before
They reduced the ability clutter (won't have much of an effect, it's just for abilities that replace others once you get your AC, there is like 2 per classes).

Core World Changes:
All Heroics adjusted to 2+ (nobody was doing them anymore before people start to cry) with transport to the area for people that repeat them.
New icons for missions to show in what category they fall (critical, exploration, etc)
 
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It more and more gives me a feeling of an "NGE".

I fear that this will become a serious turning point of the game : It might make it flourish more, or braek it.

Only future will show which of both applies.

PvP is "a complete joke" right now. Only 2-3 classes dominate everything.
And the devs buffed them.
 
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The only item I really dislike a lot is the planet level syncing but I will stay subscribed to play the free expansion, then quit after finishing it.
 
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I plan something similar.

I'm really keen on the reactions coming out after the release of the expansion. There's so much planned to get changed now ...
 
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The crafting changes coming with 4.0. That's a lot of stuff and I suspect some people aren't going to be happy about it.

Some of the stuff in there should have been done over 2 years ago too.
 
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