One of the big announcements to come out of the SWTOR livestream was that companions will no longer gain stats from the gear you give them. They will still use the cosmetics though. Instead, they grow in power as you level. Right now, you gear them as you would yourself. At first, I was a little worried about this change. But, now I think it is a good one.
On the surface, gearing your companions is neat. I like party management. However, it quickly loses its luster. If you have one character, you could have around 8 companions. Ok, that's manageable. Have an Alt? That's 16, have 5 alts? That's 40. It quickly becomes unmanageable. You end up only really using one maybe two of your companions because they have gear. The rest just sit around.
One thing BioWare did not mention in the livestream is that individual characters are going to have more companions than ever. We'll have 5 story companions, that's known. We can also reclaim our classes old companions in a non-story way. We can also get some other classes companions. We will also be able to get companions from the Cartel Market. It's becoming more of a collectible system than the static system we had.
I certainly don't want to spend the majority of my time collecting modules so I can use this myriad of companions. Now, I'm sure some people do like that. Someone always likes something you wouldn't expect. Honestly, these days I don't even care how my companions are geared, just that they are at level and look decent. I'm sure I am not alone.
Mild Mild West
4 hours ago