Darth Hater

When BioWare first introduced fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic to the idea of companions, it was a shock to many. "Why would I bother grouping if I already have a helper?" some asked. "Won't this trivialize solo content and make group content mind numbingly boring?" others wondered. "Now idiots will have even more reason to be loot ninjas," even more exclaimed. The truth is that the companion system, despite all its flaws, brings so many benefits to the table that I truly don't think the game would be anything close to what it is now without them. That doesn't mean everything is perfect on the minion front, however.

The Bad

Let's begin with what's horribly, horribly out of whack first, shall we?  Tank companions.  Everyone gets them, and everyone quickly learns just how terrible they are at actually tanking. In most situations a heavy-armor clad DPS character will actually have better survivability than a tanking companion. Things werent always this way though; for the vast majority of game testing, tanking companions had as part of their tanking stance a 40% armor buff. This allowed them to have mitigation around 40%, sometimes even up to 50%, a  far cry from the measly 20-30% mitigation they have now. Some players argued that tanking companions in those builds tanked far too well, and that healers had an inordinate advantage over other players because they had the ability to keep their companions up through anything short of an Heroic 4 quest. BioWare seemed to agree with that line of thinking, and the armor buff was removed a few weeks before launch.

The fallout was massive, and immediately apparent to anyone who had seen prior builds.  Tank companions instantly became little more than red-shirted cannon fodder and crafting helpers. This stands in stark contrast to healing and damage dealing companions, who fulfill their roles extremely well. Tanking characters backed up by a healing companion are effectively unkillable in solo and duo PvE situations. At the same time, DPS companions can output an insane amount of damage with the right equipment. I jokingly refer to my Sniper's ranged DPS companion as 'mini-me' whenever she drops a three thousand point critical shot on a target. Tanking companions by comparison are lucky to survive a fight with an Elite, and have to rest nearly every other fight at higher levels. 

That's not to say that tanking companions can't get the attention of the enemy; they do a marvelous job of holding aggro in most situations. The problem is that once every enemy in sight starts shooting at them, they crumple faster than a wet paper bag in a demolition derby.  BioWare needs to either return the flat armor buff to the Tanking stance of defense minded companions, or find some other way to significantly improve their durability, perhaps by adding a scaling armor buff with their primary stat while in tanking stance. Until that happens, most players will relegate tanking companions to the role of personal crafting assistants.

There's only one other thing that's bad about companions at present, and compared to the situation above this is really more of a "would be nice" item than an actual issue: the static nature of companion interactions. Currently, players can only speak to companions in a series of scripted conversations at specific affection and story thresholds. The end result is bursts of conversation at the beginning of every chapter, with little to no interaction throughout said chapters.

The solution to this is quite simple, and in fact is already implemented in another BioWare franchise: generic conversations. In the Mass Effect series when you speak to a companion you don't get a canned on line response, you actually get a conversation. Even if that conversation doesn't advance any plots or tell any stories, it adds to the feeling that the companion is actually a living, breathing character, and not just a robot reading lines occasionally.

The Broken

Beyond the design flaws in the current companion system, there are some technical issues that cause more problems. I can't classify these as bad for the simple fact that they're likely bugs, and not deliberately designed systems that just aren't working. Currently there are two major, and one minor, bugs with companions that, if corrected, would make a world of difference to every single player.

The first major bug deals with when your companions actually decide to get in on the action. For melee and tank classes this is a non issue; companions very handily engage the enemy once the player character is damaged in any fashion. For offensive characters, especially ranged advanced classes, companions are quite a bit more sluggish. Take the Sniper and Gunslinger for example: These mirrored ACs have it the worst of any class when it comes to companion inaction at the beginning of fights. Why? Because more than half of their attacks don't cause their companions to engage the enemy. Players have to either remember to manually activate their companion each fight, or make the conscious decision to use an ability that activates their follower, usually at a substantial DPS loss. Fixing this issue would go a long ways towards maintaining TOR's quick-paced combat.

The second major bug comes into play in the situations where a companion is disabled because of story reasons. When this happens, the crew skill system gets severely confused, and decides that up to half a player's companions are unable to be used for anything at all. It may not sound like much, but when crew missions can take an hour or more to finish, having half a player's available helpers out of commission because of a bug becomes quite aggravating.

The final bug, and it's really quite minor in comparison to how prevalent it used to be, deals with everyone's favorite landscape item: elevators. Currently there's about a 50-50 chance that when a player takes an elevator, their companion will bug out in some fashion;either by disappearing, forgetting to get off the elevator, or being flat out non-responsive until dismissed and resummoned. It's not fun to come off an elevator to find that your follower isn't doing what they need to be doing to aid you.

The Good

In spite of all the issues I've outlined above, the companion system adds a lot to The Old Republic.  On a strictly combat and mechanics level, it not only allows for an unprecedented level of soloability, but also allows players to tailor their playstyle to a given companion's abilities. The way a player chooses to approach a combat situation will end up changing dramatically depending on which companion they choose to bring to the fight.

On top of the combat contributions companions give, they are integral to what is possibly my favorite crafting system in any MMO. I realize that there are currently several major flaws in BioWare's Crew Skill design, but the framework is there to create an amazingly in-depth crafting process, and companions are right at the heart of it. There's no standing around doing nothing while you wait for 200 stacks of ore to be processed, there's no hunting for the right workbench in the middle of an absurdly crowded crafting hall, and there's no problem when you can't get your hands on the right tier of resources. All of these things are handled by your companion, which leaves time for doing whatever else you want to do in game.

Beyond the nuts and bolts, companions bring something else to The Old Republic that no other title has ever had: followers that players actually care about. These aren't faceless wolves or robots that follow you around and stab people, they're characters that players develop strong feelings for, be they feelings of affection or flat out hatred. The fact that a playerbase is so engaged in what their companions think, how they act and what they do really bodes well for future content involving these friends, allies, and sometimes even frenemies.

Conclusion

The concept of companions is, and always has been, a BioWare mainstay. From the very beginning they've supported not only their stories, but also their gameplay with these in-depth and absolutely vital followers, and The Old Republic is no exception. There are certainly issues to be resolved and bugs to be squashed with the current companion system, but the amount of good that companions are doing, and the potential good they can do in the future, is nearly unlimited.