Offline Companions

Companions bark too frequently

AI is obviously incomplete. Companions are described one way and behave enough.. example: Conrad is said to have healing ability.. he never uses it. Combat behavior is as any NPC..

Companions should be aware of their surroundings. IE not run straight into fields of poison gas together and all die in seconds.. such as at the Grannus Colossus. Or across burning terrain like in Blood Bay.. These guys are prone to group suicide..

I heard it said they are plenty strong and able to clear out dungeons pretty quickly.. well sure if it's a tier 2 dungeon. A single elder wolf would probably wipe the floor with this group. In fact, while my character is level 65, a small group of 'green' mobs came up from behind and pretty much killed them all with little effort.

Now I don't expect the companions to be power houses.. but 'strong' they are certainly not. Are they helpful.. yes.. IF you are control the situation well. Otherwise they can be a hinderance. Particularly in scenarios where you have multiple enemies and you can't keep all the agro off your companions.

AI I know will take time.. BUT.. here's some changes I'd like to see in the long term..

More strategic targeting options: Target strongest, target weakest, my target, mages, archers and melee.

Then if possible.. health management priorities. IE Heal self first.. me first.. support X and change behavior at a certain health percentage. Example: if health drops below 20%, flee.. or heal yourself first..

Awareness of traps (including natural ones)..

x1.5 Health

I see that companion health does scale slightly with player level.. but the amount is miniscule. I went up 2 levels from 64 to 66 and Conrad's health went up from 256 to 261.. 6 whole HP. At my level that's not very useful at all.

Right now, at best it feels like their only real use is keeping small fry off my back if I'm in a low tier zone.. A general 1.5 health increase would go a long away in the short term. As would reducing their bark frequency. Greatly increasing their bark variety would be nice too though I do understand their dialogues are still in process.

 

sigh

 

Yeah but first iteration.. can't expect too much. They are certainly more useful during the storyline than during end-game content but I think you'll find you'll out grow their current state fairly quickly. But most of their dialogue isn't in yet. So far I've only witnessed one conversation between them.

On the other hand.. their summoning whistle right now basically acts as free resurrection. They can't really die.. you just resummons them.

They need a lot of work and this much shouldn't have waited until launch, but I do believe they will be vastly improved over time. It's just a pity they aren't really ready for a more complete story experience. Sorry I know you're just starting offline..

All said though I do prefer to have them around. There's a certain nostalgia in having them with you than not. (old Ultima player here)

 

Yes I can. this is a fully released game with a single player story that should be working. Are we expected to play through a single player game that doesn't work? Or are we supposed to wait?

I directly asked this of Darkstarr recently and the overwhelming response by devs and others was Offline is ready to go! (with the exception of some minor balance tweaks, which are being included in R53).

 

From a technology standpoint sure. Everything's there. Companion dialogue is more ambience than anything. It doesn't advance the story in this case. So of course that's what they're going to say. But this is also a game that is never really 'finished' until they stop development.. EP1 is here.. 4 more to go..

I won't make as many allowances as I did pre-launch. We're live now and I'll be the first to agree the companions should've been fully in before going live. That said however, initial releases are rarely perfect so I'll give them that much.

It's not that you should expect a lot from the first iteration because we've launched so much as the first complete iteration should've happened before launch.

 

The bark frequency is a bug and will be toned WAY down for R53.

(We're discussing the rest of your points)

 

Oh bless you! Thank you!

 

good to hear. thanks

 

It would be nice to give them food and devotional blessings just like we can use.

 

I purposefully avoided suggestions I thought should (ideally) be going in eventually anyway.. such as inventory management and being able to give Conrad a crossbow etc.

Food is especially a good one since the volume of food available to you offline can be potentially overwhelming. How easy it is to make 20 meals in a few minutes and each one lasts for 4 hours? So it could be literally months before you need to make any more.. what are you going to do in all that time if you like to cook? Right?

 

They have already gone on the record stating there will be no inventory management of companions.

 

Really? Cause I could've sworn I specifically heard them say during the last live stream that there would be (eventually)

 

Of course, if they changed their minds and said so in a video, then who knows.

Once again, this is a MASSIVE change to the way the game would work for offline gamers.

 

The distinction to be made here is "for Episode 1" the comment I heard in the live stream did not give an estimated time of when that feature would go in. I believe I've also heard 'not in EP1" somewhere else. It's not the same thing as 'never going to happen'.. So likely they're probably expecting to work on it for EP2.

 

That's really sad. I asked about this when they were fixing the Companions and it was said they would scale accordingly as you level up. I guess they didn't do that yet, or did but didn't bother to test it, or it's horribly broken.

Companions are still mostly useless as far as combat is concerned.

I don't think they see "ready" the same way, i.e., a complete, polished, commercial quality, finished Ep1 game. It's simply just another monthly release that will perpetually be in a state of fixing and improvement. There's still so much work to do for offline to make it enjoyable and balanced. I'm still bummed they dropped in-game maps and have yet to come up with an appropriate offline solution as SotA Map is junk for it.

I guess I'll wait until R55 at the very least for a start from scratch playthrough. For now I'll just continue to dabble and test things.

 

The companions act like they are tamed creatures.

Maybe if you level summoning, combat training, and taming specialization each to 100 each companion will have 1000 hit points like the tamed obsidian bear and darkstarr corpion.

 

They do scale.. a little bit.. but it's hardly noticeable. Their hp seem to go up every 2 levels..

I have found companions to be a little useful.. it's just they're terrible at taking care of themselves.

 

Adv Level 200 + 265 GMs.

Fiona : 93 hp -> 540 hp
Ariel : 61 hp -> 361 hp
Conrad : 126 hp -> 733 hp

I took them to a Tier 5 scene and they still got wiped. They are too weak, do not heal themselves, and still barely do any damage. Conrad maybe hit something for 50 points once. You end up in a support role, spamming heals or spamming their summoning whistles to constantly ressurrect them.

 

ugh . You'd think with those hp they'd at least be able to hold their own.

You know come to think of it.. I'm not sure I've seen them do a single crit yet. I had been thinking that at least they can take a few hits but now I'm not so sure

 

Actually, that 50 point was a crit.

So I took them for another spin but this time against a single Troll and you can already guess the results. I was far better off just soloing it. But regarding crits, I've seen Conrad do upwards of 70's, Fiona around 40's, and Ariel in the 20's. For non-crit hits against the Troll, they were doing about 2-10 on average, with occasional 20-30. It's just not enough, especially assuming they were essentially max level based on my character. Combined with the constant babysitting if there's more than a couple mobs or a boss mob and you're better off without them.

If only they could eat food, use potions (offensive and defensive), and equip crafted gear. Those things gives us huge advantages in combat.

Otherwise, they're gonna need to amp up the combat scaling by 10x and work on the AI. Hopefully they'll get around to it someday. It would be fun to have them in the tougher scenes.