Companions - Your first impression on our new friends

Elwendryll

I got Mirri, I can't wait to unlock her ultimate, so far I'm having fun, but the companion AI bugs me. A lot.

1) Standing still in lasting AOEs. Why? I guess it's not obvious to fix, but you could try.
2) Trying to cast an ability while not having line of sight. It causes the companion to get stuck on a loop, doing the casting time but never actually firing the ability. Sounds easy to fix. Just don't allow them to cast when they don't have line of sight... They should prioritize getting closer.

Alurria

Xebov wrote: »

Alurria wrote: »

Xebov wrote: »

Alurria wrote: »

What I really dislike is all the exaggeration of their faults. Everyone unnderstands that companions will need tweaks instead of bashing this new feature why not suggest ways to make them better? These forums could use a dose of good not bad criticism.

The problem is these suggestions where made the last 7 weeks during the PTS cycle and all of them where ignored.

The problematic survivability was mentioned as well as the low damage and the extremely grindy gear system. During the cycle the compagnion healing was even nerfed togetehr with their dodge capabilities.

I understand what you are saying and how you are saying it, it is reasonable how ever as I said you will find other threads that only bash or have unreasonable expectations and exaggerate issues with the companions. I have been questing with my companion I don't forget where he is in relation to me and I watch his health. He hasn't died yet. I think people are expecting too much, and not giving usable feed back. Saying a companion died to a boss, okay which boss? What level is the companion, what gear are they wearing what skills are they using? With no information just bashing a new feature is just complaining. If a person is so unhappy about companions ffs don't use them it's not that hard. But for the love of god if people can't give reasonable feedback they need to zip it! Because it is not helpful and it's really disgusting to continue to read peoples unrelenting complaints.

I understand your point. The problem is that the Devs hyped this as a great feature and this caused expectations. They then ignored all the feedback and delivered a system that has nearly no integration with the existing game or uses any experience gained from other game systems. That players get upset by this is understandable, especially given that this mess is the main addition of the whole addon.

Again, I understand people being disappointed. But not to the degree of constant bashing or complaining. Constructive criticism is vastly different than whining and bashing. People need to be constructive when giving feed back or it just becomes unrelenting complaining. There is a difference and I would venture you understand this. Sure I would like companions to be a bit stronger, maybe in the future they can gain more levels, I would like them to be a bit smarter. So far Bastian isn't really that verbose, I know he like ale and books and he like when I harvest nodes. I did one thing he didn't like but I am not sure what it was because we were fighting in a Oblivion portal. My feedback is they need a little bit more of everything. But over all I am finding them enjoyable. I am sure Zos is watching them and has data. My gripe is players with unreasonable expectations influencing the devs. We have seen this time and time again a vocal minority ruining for example proc sets for Magicka users. Or what ever they decide to dog pile on. Before companions were out there were threads on this forum about companions replacing players and being able do things that most of the player base doesn't do. So pardon me for having no patience with complainers.

tim99

the only thing i dont like so far, is that i had to change my build and slot healing stuff and taunt.
Because i hate it when she dies ^^ I hope she gets more selfheal at max level, so i just need the taunt to take bosses off of her.

driosketch

etchedpixels wrote: »

I set up Miri out of curiosity and let her tag along randomly while I did all the main story line. Providing she's left with a bow and her defensive skills she doesn't seem to die (or do much of anything but slighty up the DPS) overland or delves,

Same setup same experience. She works out for that, and her comments are interesting.

I did have a tinge of loneliness, though, when I thought about that fact that I'm running around an MMO with an NPC friend.

wolfie1.0.

ADarklore wrote: »

wtlonewolf20 wrote: »

outside of that, they are hard to control, die in combat, subpar at everything. To put it simply they fail at almost everything except providing occasional dialogue (repeated mind you) and as a way to use more outfit and mount combination options.

TL;DR i would trade both companions as they currently exist for 2 more slots to place mounts in my home and mannequins that i could place Outfit Styles on.

So exactly WHAT content are you having them in that they are dieing so much? Because I'm running public dungeons, dolmens, delves, etc... and have yet to have one die. Group dungeons? How do you have them specced? Because if some people have so many problems with them, and yet others do not... I'm thinking 'user error'. Because NO, until they are fully leveled with full purple gear, they should never be put in a melee role... and even fully leveled, they have limited skills with cooldowns... which means they will require additional player assistance in harder content. They should also be specced with mostly self-healing and defensive skills until they are fully leveled, there is a reason why they have access to so many of them.

I just can't help but feel far too many people are thinking companions are going to be player replacements with massive damage and survivability... but this is NOT a single player game... which is why in reality, Companions are meant to be more for role players and soloists than high end group players. These people also cannot accept that player leveling, gear grind, etc... is meant to take place over MONTHS, not have them maxed the first week or two. So they get frustrated that Companions won't do what THEY expected or wanted, so then they blame the devs or companions instead of... 'user error'.

The content: overland world bosses and quest bosses, and other such content that can be soloed by relatively low level player characters. Content that I have been able to do without cp and on new characters at level 15 ish for some time. Content that shouldn't really kill them at any level they have died. I didn't exactly take them into a vet dungeon solo+ companion.

Please also understand that I solo as much content as I can in this game, so really I am in the target audience you indicate.

That you state that companions wont be even moderately useful to me until they are fully specced out with full purple gear is an added point in frustration.

I understand the restrictions around AI mapping as well as the desire to extend the content and that it will take time. I can work with it. But that doesn't reduce the frustration involved.

I only really called out the devs on the rapport system and their choices around it. That is something that they could fix easily and make the system less annoying and provide more details regarding.

I can work with the companion system if I want and get my achievements, but really as it stands the benefits they provide are not worth the effort involved to get them where they need to be to make proper use of them.

Xebov

SilverBride wrote: »

Xebov wrote: »

The problem is these suggestions where made the last 7 weeks during the PTS cycle and all of them where ignored.

I hope they really are looking at these suggestions. But it takes time to figure out just what to tweak and by how much, then apply the changes.

Remember the huge Rapids debate? They did listen to feedback and in the end made a change that was more than the players even asked for, even after they announced that they had no plans to change it. But it took awhile to happen.

So keep giving feedback. Positive as well as negative.

The thing is that the low drop rates for gear as well as the bad performance in AoEs would have been solvable fairly easy. Not everything requires complicated solutions right away.

orion_1981usub17_ESO

To make companions a more reasonable option, the need to have Craftmade companion sets that can be improved by crafters. They should even have sets with smaller bonuses like ebon.

Auto resistance to aoe damage, like a permanent 20-30%. The AI simply isn't capable of keeping itself alive in aoe environments.

The ability to stand where told and or hit x button. So we can finally solo direfrost again!

Village_Idiot

I have read alot of players comments who want exceptional companions to be better than them.
To have all the tools to max their new companions with little to no effort.

Yet, It seems they have forgotten how they first started on their very first toon.
The clumsiness.
The squishiness.
How the grind was serious for the best gear possible.
How some are still grinding for keys to only get the not-right weight or the wrong shoulder piece.
The million google searches, wiki reads, reddit look through's, etc., etc.,

How much time did it take you? was it fast for a little bit of nothing work? or did you have to "put in work"? why would your companion be any different? or did you forget that too?

I personally think this is a great addiction to the game, Bethesda! My apologizes to the complainers, they know not what they do. Just giving ESO my thumbs up!
I cant wait to see what my dark elf can do in time.

For the record my toon died once during my delve runs in Blackwood.

Slyclone

proprio.meb16_ESO wrote: »

Hey! Bastian is the damn Vault Tech representative!

Exactly..... now where's Piper?

jssriot

I will say as someone who isn't using Companions and has no plans to, the introduction of Companions to the game is not at lot a QoL improvement for players who are playing around a player using a companion. Just the aesthetics of their janky, super-lifeless AI pathfinding is awful to have to see around the ESO world (especially if their player is using any kind of speed buff) and that's bad enough. But being in the same delve or quest area with someone with a Companion is just not a good experience. It's like driving on the same road with someone swerving from lane to lane erratically. You just can't predict what nonsense you will have to navigate around and how you're going to have use your mental energy to work around the chaos it creates. Like yesterday I was entering the boss room in a delve in time to find someone's Bastien "tanking" the boss (I guess) but kept backing up so that the boss was right on top of me when I came into that small space and I couldn't even put down my AoEs on the boss because Bastien was just leading it god knows where while Bastien's player was LA'ing from a distance (and not a noob either, they were like 1300 CP). Yeah, I'm not a fan of this, which is probably why I spent most of my game time today playing something other than ESO and only logged on to ESO for crafting writs, hirelings and a couple of dailies.

Crazyprophet

I'm having good fun adventuring with Bastian! I intend to quest with him through the content in chronological order!

Feels like my rapport meter has barely moved though. Didn't know how grindy it'd be!

Aristocles22

If the companions were actual humans, they'd not only be unpopular, but they'd get kicked from at least half the groups they were in. So whiny.

Elvenheart

Luke_Flamesword wrote: »

Adventure awaits!


I must admit that I like Bastien. Before launch I thought that I will go with Mirri, but Bastien stole my heart My main is dk, so he fits perfectly with his dk-like skills, also I like his voice and personality. I just need to put bag on his head when stealing and murdering

Love how you all are wearing the same armor in the pic! I could have written this post (except for the stealing and murdering part) because I was looking more forward to Mirri at first too, but now I’m on Team Bastien. 😁

gronkdamage

I'm just gonna run in and dump this here: Gotta say, Companions are completely pointless... Absolutely worthless. I hope ZOS fixes them and makes them worth having.

Eyro

Now that I have played with them for a day or two I’m not really sure what I think. To me they sort of feel not quite done.

For example it wasn’t hard to imagine that people would want their companions to look different. Yet all we can change is their costume? We have other cosmetics. And obviously they can be put on the companion because costumes can be. So why did we stop with costumes?

And I get that maybe better gear is needed. Maybe they need to level up to be more useful, but as a selling point for the expansion getting them and then being like oh cool in two three months of grinding before they are anything useful.

I didn’t read anything about them going in out side of what it was released in the promotion videos, I guess I just expected, more?

Right now I have mine out because I guess I like being yelled at when I accidentally kill bugs and I always thought looting containers was to easy.

Here is hoping in two three months all the time I spent yelling, ‘Get off the ******* urn!’ Will be worth it.

On the good side I always felt bad about not being able to use so many of the spiffy mounts I have. At least one more gets to stretch it’s legs.

mickeyx

SWTOR has the best companion system. They have enough examples out there to take inspiration from.

Two days ago I was running a flashpoint (dungeons in swtor on master difficulty) in team of 4. One of the player got dc. We wait around 15 minutes for him but he didn't log in again. So the tank took his companion out. Set it to healer and we finished the flashpoint.

That's the kind of system I was hoping for. Can companions even survive normal mode in ESO dungeons if we replace a player with them in case of emergency? Nope.

Moreover, for those blaming players for complaining too much. Companions was the most hyped feature of Blackwood. The way it was advertised it made you think it's a God send gift for casual and soloers. When that's not the case. Companions are completely useless out of overland content which solo players were managing fine anyways. Seriously who needs companions for questing where you can two shot pretty much anything?

Arato

They seem to have their own aggro radius and they pull more trash resulting in more "going through the motions" borefest combat with garbage mobs that kills enjoyment of the game when you have to do it every 5 feet.
makes me not want to use them in delves because they pull everything.

DreamyLu

To keep it short: for me, the main is that in comparison to the - supposed to be - support NPCs in quests (what a fake...), companions do support for real. So yes, it's maybe not ideal but at least, they really contribute and I appreciate that.

Abigail

When we read others' posts I think we are rather myopic, judging comments exclusively through our own eyes. But each person brings a different skill set to the game.

I am 80, fighting an inoperable stage-3 brain tumor, rheumatoid arthritis, and a severe tremor. Playing this game is both therapeutic and sometimes a frustrating challenge in the extreme -- random normal dungeons with fake tanks drive me up the wall when they can't hold aggro and bosses focus on my healers (I've read that some of you dismiss this, but for me it's a nagging issue that makes the game not fun at all).

The promise ZOS made with companions -- making more content accessible to casual solo players -- kept me playing ESO for these past several months. Sadly, that's a promise which is likely unobtainable when one's existence has already exceeded it's amortizable shelf life. Here are the problems for me, and let me restate them "constructively":

1. Leveling companions so they may be more effective is currently an unreasonable grind from *my* perspective. Given my circumstances, my favored grinding place is a dolmen. Today I spent four hours there (with 50% experience scrolls) and got only halfway through one level. Alts level more quickly!

2. In the three days (28 hours actual playing time) that I've been grinding up my companions, I get gear drops roughly every four hours. I've solo'd a couple low-level normals, one public dungeon, several delves and, of course, the ubiquitous dolmen, and it still works out to about one gear drop per four hours. Unfortunately, with duplicates and unwanted drops this seems an incredible waste of time.

I've been playing MMOs for 22 years. I understand the carrot and stick philosophy and the intrinsic notion that challenges cannot be too easy or players will accomplish them and move on to another game. Notwithstanding, ZOS made blatant promises about the utility of companions for solo-playing casuals, like me, but given the unrealistic grind to supposedly realize those useful companions, said promises were blatant false advertising. At the moment, I'm quite over a barrel as to whether I'll even continue playing. I've been at ESO off and on since 2014 and have experienced one too many false promises and an overriding game philosophy that's unrelenting in trying to pound square-shaped players through round holes. On the one hand, ZOS wants players to be all socially cooperative, but on the other there are a plethora of game features driving players to contemptable greed, selfishness, and encouraging outright harassment. In many respects, ZOS is a company feeding its consumers rotten carrots while simultaneously beating them with the stick. Someone will read this and recommend I go play another game -- something I'm debating as I write this.

Lugaldu

Gilvoth wrote: »

my first impression of companions is that when i download mods that give companions in any other game mmo or single player, i simply walk up to the companion, ask that companion to follow me, and boom, i got myself a companion.
but here in eso, its a huge hassle and all kinds of quest and problems and not even allowed fair armor for the companion and they made the companions extremely Weak.

Personally, I am glad that this is not the case, that you simply select the companion and then it is available at the maximum level from the start. I see the companions as a task and entertainment, you develop the relationship with them, level them, try to get the best equipment - as someone wrote before: just like it is at the beginning with a level 1 character without CP.

TelvanniWizard

The rapport meter is bugged. Doesn't move at all.

GenjiraX

I haven’t encountered the companions yet but the forum is full of others’ opinions, almost universally negative, which leave me unenthusiastic about engaging with them. They seem to be at once an annoyance, an inconvenience and a liability. Is this a fair judgment?

Gythral

GenjiraX wrote: »

I haven’t encountered the companions yet but the forum is full of others’ opinions, almost universally negative, which leave me unenthusiastic about engaging with them. They seem to be at once an annoyance, an inconvenience and a liability. Is this a fair judgment?

Yes...

they run away when they pull as a non-tank
die to things everything can avoid
stand in the way all year otherwise
& lose their gear at almost every turn!

Rezdayn

Rapport is a korean mmo level grind. As it stands its a waste of time. Overall they are useless. Fun little side thing but useless.

Couple that with the insane grind for their repport and I am meh and out.

DaiKahn

Lugaldu wrote: »

Have you already started your adventure, what is your first impression?

I'm liking Mirri and her dialogue so far (have put it up to more frequent). I just wish there was a bit more interaction. Like, I know she'll mention drinks near a cooking fire so you can make some and add to her rapport, but she mentions she's famished or whatnot and I have no way of feeding her, Just more little things like that would be cool

Edit: I like the things Mirri says when I'm thieving, makes me laugh

Orion_89

Just leveled Mirri up to 12 and she became able to solo gryphon, but her HP was about zero. Companions need to be tougher, I guess.

hydrocynus

mickeyx wrote: »

That's the kind of system I was hoping for. Can companions even survive normal mode in ESO dungeons if we replace a player with them in case of emergency? Nope.

Yes. We set Mirri to Healer and did the following:
Veteran Spindleclutch 1: No Death Speed run Hardmode
Veteran City of Ash 1: No Death Speed run Hardmode
Veteran Imperial City Prison: Hardmode, but all of us died
Veteran ScaleCaller Peak: Non Hard mode

So - just like all other content in the game, the companions are capable provided the rest of the players are too.

TempusFugit

I am a casual player and am having great fun working with both Mirri and Bastian.

I love having either of them as company in my travels and to participate in doing quests. In my experience they both hold their own as we battle together though I do have to keep an eye on them.

I also enjoy and look forward to hearing each of their comments. I find it great fun when either of them ranks and am getting them both trained in all armor and weapons to have a better choice of skills and passives for each of them.

Having loads of fun with them both. Am so very happy that we finally have companions.

GreenHere

Abigail wrote: »

When we read others' posts I think we are rather myopic, judging comments exclusively through our own eyes. But each person brings a different skill set to the game.

I am 80, fighting an inoperable stage-3 brain tumor, rheumatoid arthritis, and a severe tremor. Playing this game is both therapeutic and sometimes a frustrating challenge in the extreme -- random normal dungeons with fake tanks drive me up the wall when they can't hold aggro and bosses focus on my healers (I've read that some of you dismiss this, but for me it's a nagging issue that makes the game not fun at all).

The promise ZOS made with companions -- making more content accessible to casual solo players -- kept me playing ESO for these past several months. Sadly, that's a promise which is likely unobtainable when one's existence has already exceeded it's amortizable shelf life. Here are the problems for me, and let me restate them "constructively":

1. Leveling companions so they may be more effective is currently an unreasonable grind from *my* perspective. Given my circumstances, my favored grinding place is a dolmen. Today I spent four hours there (with 50% experience scrolls) and got only halfway through one level. Alts level more quickly!

2. In the three days (28 hours actual playing time) that I've been grinding up my companions, I get gear drops roughly every four hours. I've solo'd a couple low-level normals, one public dungeon, several delves and, of course, the ubiquitous dolmen, and it still works out to about one gear drop per four hours. Unfortunately, with duplicates and unwanted drops this seems an incredible waste of time.

I've been playing MMOs for 22 years. I understand the carrot and stick philosophy and the intrinsic notion that challenges cannot be too easy or players will accomplish them and move on to another game. Notwithstanding, ZOS made blatant promises about the utility of companions for solo-playing casuals, like me, but given the unrealistic grind to supposedly realize those useful companions, said promises were blatant false advertising. At the moment, I'm quite over a barrel as to whether I'll even continue playing. I've been at ESO off and on since 2014 and have experienced one too many false promises and an overriding game philosophy that's unrelenting in trying to pound square-shaped players through round holes. On the one hand, ZOS wants players to be all socially cooperative, but on the other there are a plethora of game features driving players to contemptable greed, selfishness, and encouraging outright harassment. In many respects, ZOS is a company feeding its consumers rotten carrots while simultaneously beating them with the stick. Someone will read this and recommend I go play another game -- something I'm debating as I write this.

For whatever it's worth, this random stranger on the internet thinks your post is spot on, @Abigail ! It's insightful, and accurate, and I agree with every point you made. Take an Awesome!

In particular the point about people being myopic really rings true for me. It's a bad habit that I tend to think is just kind of the default state for humans (including me), so I make a conscious effort to try and see things from other people's perspective and really "get" where they're coming from; meanwhile I can't help but feel like many other folks make a pointed effort to do just the opposite. It really is frustrating. Sometimes I'm honestly not sure if people's reading comprehension is just laughably low, or if they're only reading every other word/sentence, or if they're intentionally not understanding me / each other, or... I don't even know what. Boggles the mind at times. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



I'm not an expert or anything here, but I'd like to offer a hopefully-helpful suggestion for if you decide to stick around ESO and continue to make use of Companions (which also is just general good advice for anybody using Companions, I hope):

Set your new friend up as a pocket healer. (IMO, Mirri is the better choice due to a couple of her skills being pretty decent survivability aids, but YMMV. Either will work.) A hefty portion of their issues stem from them just dying too easily when the going gets tough, and the best way to avoid that is to ensure they've got lots of healing and don't hold enemies' attention. So if you don't want to be manually babysitting them by going out of your way to heal them or pull aggro off of them, the best thing to do is attempt to have them focus on keeping you both alive, and keeping themselves "out of sight" so to speak. As a Tank or a Damage Dealer I find them to be too much trouble for too little gain... not to mention just kind of generally lackluster in a way I can't quite put my finger on. But when I have them on Healer duty (and maybe slot that skill that turns them Invisible for a moment to lose enemies' focus if things are getting hairy), then we both have a much better time.

(Also, I didn't test every trait/weight combo, but I'm inclined to think that the Quickened gear is best for this. Beefier heals don't mean a whole heck of lot if they're only ticking roughly half the time, because that leaves a pretty huge window where NO HEALING at all is active from the Companion. Quickened helps minimize the downtimes, and in my experience constant weaker heals trump sporadic stronger heals a good 90+ percent of the time. And the additional toughness gear (Bolstered, was it?) made laughably little difference to their overall survivability in my testing. YMMV.)

I get that this won't scratch the itch for people who were wanting more combat-oriented Companions, but if you're like me and aren't keen to change your builds / play style to put more focus on keeping the NPCs alive that are supposed to be helping YOU, then this might be the best way for now. It's the best I've found so far, anyway. While they're alive they're genuinely useful and not an active detriment most of the time when running them this way, which is something I can't really say for other setups I tried. Not to mention they just die significantly less, which is obviously nice!

mwo1480

had a lot of fun with the male one, but damn so much annoying comments they make, and for some reason mirri keeps deactivating randomly so kinda dont use her now