Are you content with companion gearing?

Gray_howling_parrot · August 2023

This is a 2 part question for those of us that utilize companions:

1. Are you content with the companion gearing system? Would you rather continue using companion equipment or be able to place gear that we can use as players on them?
2. If you could change one thing about companions in general, what would it be? How would you make them better?

Nestor · August 2023

I would like to be able to give my companions crafted sets.

Grizzbeorn · August 2023

I don't need them to be able to wear the same gear we can wear, but I wish we could improve its quality (even if only up to Epic/purple), and I wish we could deconstruct it for basic materials. (ore, cloth, wood, etc.)
Just so it is easier for us to manage without imparting an abusive mechanic.

And somewhere down the line, it might be nice to be able to craft Companion gear.
Again, not to the same robustness of our own gear, but just to have another avenue of companion gear management.

Dokolus · August 2023

I'd prefer to be able to give companions sets I can wear or gear I can craft for them that we can also use, since it just makes it more universal and also immersive.

Soarora · August 2023

Getting the gear is too troublesome and takes up too much space, so I don’t really gear them. Purple gear is so expensive I never bind, only sell. It doesn’t make sense for a companion item to be so much money when casuals are the ones who need them the most.

Braffin · August 2023

Soarora wrote: »

Getting the gear is too troublesome and takes up too much space, so I don’t really gear them. Purple gear is so expensive I never bind, only sell. It doesn’t make sense for a companion item to be so much money when casuals are the ones who need them the most.

Yeah, pricing for this items is odd. I don't use companions and gifted some purple items I got from ZoZ boxes to my guildies. That's when I learned, that some weapons for companions are worth several million gold.

Gifted them nonetheless, as I'm no sweaty tradelord.

Snamyap · August 2023

Braffin wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

Getting the gear is too troublesome and takes up too much space, so I don’t really gear them. Purple gear is so expensive I never bind, only sell. It doesn’t make sense for a companion item to be so much money when casuals are the ones who need them the most.

Yeah, pricing for this items is odd.

Not really, it's just another horrible RNG drop system making the stuff very rare.

haelgaan · August 2023

current system is crap. player should be able to upgrade gear though some mechanism other than random drops. also would be appreciated for players to craft companion gear from scratch.

tbh i'm surprised that they keep releasing new companions without these basic QOL improvements to the function itself.

Alphawolf01A · August 2023

Dokolus wrote: »

I'd prefer to be able to give companions sets I can wear or gear I can craft for them that we can also use, since it just makes it more universal and also immersive.

The biggest problem I see with putting player gear on a companion is that companions don't have mag or stam, so resource increase and recovery would do nothing for them. Our gear gets a trait and an enchantment, they don't have the set up to utilize either, let alone both.

I agree with others that the gear should at least be upgradable and maybe even re-traitable, even if we had to research all their traits to do it.

Gray_howling_parrot · August 2023

I agree with what everyone is saying - curious, because I just don't remember from when they were announced, but what was their reasoning for not allowing player gear (whether that be crafted, overland, dungeon/trial, etc)? Was it a technological limitation or just a grind they wanted to implement for players?

Dokolus · August 2023

Alphawolf01A wrote: »

Dokolus wrote: »

I'd prefer to be able to give companions sets I can wear or gear I can craft for them that we can also use, since it just makes it more universal and also immersive.

The biggest problem I see with putting player gear on a companion is that companions don't have mag or stam, so resource increase and recovery would do nothing for them. Our gear gets a trait and an enchantment, they don't have the set up to utilize either, let alone both.

I agree with others that the gear should at least be upgradable and maybe even re-traitable, even if we had to research all their traits to do it.

We should still be able to craft gear for them that avoids the mag/stam upgrades (there are other traits than just those, even for recrafting).

Kappachi · August 2023

I do wish we could give them set pieces so that we could solo content more efficiently, especially with the upcoming endless dungeons, however many people have invested tens of millions into best in slot purple companion gear at this point... Maybe the game can give us alternative slots that allow us to outfit our companion with any 2 set bonuses in the game, could be a new gold sink where you pay a million gold to activate one bonus or something like that(high fee because just like companion gear it will be usable across any character you have who has that companion unlocked & high-end companion gear is usually 6mil+ gold so it's a reasonable gold sink).

Gray_howling_parrot · August 2023

Dokolus wrote: »

Alphawolf01A wrote: »

Dokolus wrote: »

I'd prefer to be able to give companions sets I can wear or gear I can craft for them that we can also use, since it just makes it more universal and also immersive.

The biggest problem I see with putting player gear on a companion is that companions don't have mag or stam, so resource increase and recovery would do nothing for them. Our gear gets a trait and an enchantment, they don't have the set up to utilize either, let alone both.

I agree with others that the gear should at least be upgradable and maybe even re-traitable, even if we had to research all their traits to do it.

We should still be able to craft gear for them that avoids the mag/stam upgrades (there are other traits than just those, even for recrafting).

Yea and even without the stam/mag wpn dmg/spell dmg bonuses, the gear would still be better than what the companions use. It would be cool to have the 5 piece bonuses, monster sets, etc.

Sarannah · August 2023

Jaustink wrote: »

This is a 2 part question for those of us that utilize companions:

1. Are you content with the companion gearing system? Would you rather continue using companion equipment or be able to place gear that we can use as players on them?
2. If you could change one thing about companions in general, what would it be? How would you make them better?

1: Yes I am content with companion gearing. And I would NOT want normal player gear to be used on companions. The only thing about companion gear I would change is allowing us to upgrade the companion gear's quality, as we have 0 control over what we find with which trait and with what quality.

2: Companions are awesome, but the one change I would make would be: Do not allow companions to get aggro at all, unless they specifically have a taunt skill equipped.

PS: I absolutely love companions!

Arcturus · August 2023

Should be able to craft it ourselves with enough skill and materials specific to companion gear (that aren't an RNG nightmare).

Gray_howling_parrot · August 2023

Sarannah wrote: »

Jaustink wrote: »

This is a 2 part question for those of us that utilize companions:

1. Are you content with the companion gearing system? Would you rather continue using companion equipment or be able to place gear that we can use as players on them?
2. If you could change one thing about companions in general, what would it be? How would you make them better?

1: Yes I am content with companion gearing. And I would NOT want normal player gear to be used on companions. The only thing about companion gear I would change is allowing us to upgrade the companion gear's quality, as we have 0 control over what we find with which trait and with what quality.

2: Companions are awesome, but the one change I would make would be: Do not allow companions to get aggro at all, unless they specifically have a taunt skill equipped.

PS: I absolutely love companions!

Interesting! Do you have a reason why you DON'T want player gear as an option on companions?

Dokolus · August 2023

Jaustink wrote: »

Dokolus wrote: »

Alphawolf01A wrote: »

Dokolus wrote: »

I'd prefer to be able to give companions sets I can wear or gear I can craft for them that we can also use, since it just makes it more universal and also immersive.

The biggest problem I see with putting player gear on a companion is that companions don't have mag or stam, so resource increase and recovery would do nothing for them. Our gear gets a trait and an enchantment, they don't have the set up to utilize either, let alone both.

I agree with others that the gear should at least be upgradable and maybe even re-traitable, even if we had to research all their traits to do it.

We should still be able to craft gear for them that avoids the mag/stam upgrades (there are other traits than just those, even for recrafting).

Yea and even without the stam/mag wpn dmg/spell dmg bonuses, the gear would still be better than what the companions use. It would be cool to have the 5 piece bonuses, monster sets, etc.

Now you mentioned the set bonuses, what if they allowed us to research traits that are geared specifically towards our companion's strengths?. I feel that would be nifty to spec towards and make for some nice customisation.

phaneub17_ESO · August 2023

Deconstructing and Improving companion gear would be nice, also mats from deconstructing should be 100%. There's plenty of crappy epic gear you would never use and the only option is to vendor it. If we could deconstruct for upgrade material to then use on lower quality companion gear with good traits. I say 2:1 for uncommon to superior, 3:1 for superior to epic, and 1:1 for epic to legendary. Now there's only one legendary companion ring from a promotional event, but what if you don't want the ring? Deconstruct it, get legendary mat, and apply it to another item.

AcadianPaladin · August 2023

Regarding gear, I'd like to see companions with their own small inventory just for carrying a few extra pieces of companion gear so I can readily change their role.

Overall, my biggest wishes for improving companions would be:
1. Fix the dodge-roll problem on every single companion ranged weapon (except ice staff). As things are now, I consider the companion ice staff to be the only usable companion ranged weapon.
2. Allow companions to wear headgear like hats, circlets, hoods, helmets.

metheglyn · August 2023

I think it would be nice if we could craft specific companion gear. Another layer to the crafting system, in essence, that lets us research companion gear traits and then craft that gear for them, so we don't have to rely solely on drops.

If I could change something about companions, I would make their dialog options more robust and give them a wider variety of things to say and comment on out in the world. They all have interesting, distinctive personalities, and I wish that came across in more situations.

BetweenMidgets · August 2023

Unpopular opinion, but I do not think they should be wearing sets that we, as players, have access to.

Personally, I don't want the server doing all sorts of extra calculations for a sub-par bot.

I do think we should be able to upgrade their gear, or decon their gear.
If they wanted to make some specifically companion crafted sets that increase their HP, Stam, or Mag, I'd be fine with that.

Finedaible · August 2023

1: Companion armor is ok. It would be a technical nightmare to implement player proc sets into a NPC loadout anyway so I never expected as much (not that I expected companions at all). I don't really rely on companions that much though since they die where you would most need them, but I think the companion armor traits are rather shallow and don't add all that much depth to "builds." As far as I can tell, Focus is redundant since they start at 0 and you cannot increase their critical damage so there's no point in choosing daggers over swords or axes since there doesn't seem to be any difference between them other than visual; Same applies to two-hander weapons.

2: What I would change is making gear choice a bit more complex than it is now so that some thought can be put into companion builds with a better payout. Alternatively, I would increase companion survivability just a slight amount more because they seem to stand in stupid a lot and the 'AI' is not complex enough to realize it. Ranged DPS companions often pull bosses outside of their reset range as well, so they actually hinder you most of the time.

Hurbster · August 2023

I've given up, too random for me.

kargen27 · August 2023

Companion gear will not drop if you don't have a companion summoned. To me that means the companion is earning the gear. From that perspective it makes sense that the gear could be different.

katanagirl1 · August 2023

I can imagine that if the companions could equip the same sets that players use that it would significantly increase the number of calculations that the game needs to make and would add performance issues. Plus, they have invested in a system for them that mirrors our traits and would not want to abandon that.

However, it would be nice to be able to improve the quality of their gear and possibly transmute the traits to some more desirable one. That would of course require some transmute gems (not as many as for player gear) and some research as well.

Warhawke_80 · August 2023

I really want to craft my companion gear...

Freelancer_ESO · August 2023

I would say I am basically content with gearing. By the time the companion is actually leveled fully you'll likely have gotten some drops. If you want to totally min-max it's not going to be cheap but, it doesn't necessarily need to be either.

If I was to improve one thing in general it would be making them better at dealing with content in dungeons. I'd like for them to be able to pull levers/pressure plates and I'd like them to do a bit better in the occasional boss fight they get messed up on.

In the long run, I think companion AI should be used to help players learn dungeons and to reduce pressure in the queues.

Tenthirty2 · August 2023

1. Are you content with the companion gearing system? Would you rather continue using companion equipment or be able to place gear that we can use as players on them?
It's ok right now, if it never changes I won't be heartbroken.
That said it would be AWESOME if we could equip them with the same sets players can use, or even just crafted-only sets.
Like others have mentioned at least being able to upgrade their gear and deconstructing it would be a great feature.

2. If you could change one thing about companions in general, what would it be? How would you make them better?
I'd love to see ZoS improve companions combat AI, right now it's awful. Forget not standing in stupid, heck they run TOWARD stupid.
It would also be nice if we could give them a basic role or ruleset like "Ranged", "Melee", "Aggressive", etc.
It seems like they have something of a brain cell there, but it's very inconsistent. I've had Ember often retreat from dungeon and world bosses but sometimes too far and resetting them.
Other times even though she has ranged skills slotted I'll look over and she's nose to nose with a dragon, that never ends well for her.
Companions are great in delves and pub dungeons, but any harder content and their combat routines can't seem to manage it.

Parasaurolophus · August 2023

No, because companions are casual content, but getting purple gear is no longer a casual task. Especially considering the general uselessness of companions. I think that players don't need the ability to improve the quality of equipment for companions. ZoS just must to remove the quality parameter for this equipment and make everything "one color".

Sarannah · August 2023

Jaustink wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Jaustink wrote: »

This is a 2 part question for those of us that utilize companions:

1. Are you content with the companion gearing system? Would you rather continue using companion equipment or be able to place gear that we can use as players on them?
2. If you could change one thing about companions in general, what would it be? How would you make them better?

1: Yes I am content with companion gearing. And I would NOT want normal player gear to be used on companions. The only thing about companion gear I would change is allowing us to upgrade the companion gear's quality, as we have 0 control over what we find with which trait and with what quality.

2: Companions are awesome, but the one change I would make would be: Do not allow companions to get aggro at all, unless they specifically have a taunt skill equipped.

PS: I absolutely love companions!

Interesting! Do you have a reason why you DON'T want player gear as an option on companions?

Many reasons actually:
-ZOS would have to balance companions for every player set.
-ZOS would have to keep companions in minds when creating future player sets.
-Companion gear is a nice extra possible good drop when using them.
-Companions skills would become too complicated if they could use all possible player sets.
-Companions could become bugged too easily with certain player sets, and this many player sets in existence.
-Companions would be affected by balance changes if they could use player sets.
-Companions could become too flashy with certain player sets.
-As someone mentioned above me: It could create lag due to all the possible extra server calculations.
-Companions are not players, we should not dress them like us(set wise).
-Companion gear is an extra branch in the economy(even though I do not trade companiongear myself), a more fleshed out economy is always better.

Haenk · August 2023

As a "master crafter" I can not understand, why I should not be able to create even white companion gear. That makes no sense.
At least allow us to upgrade gear.