Leveling companions has very little player interaction.

[CaptainJLP]

Leveling companions in warframe has the least player interaction in the whole game. As of right now, the only way a player who is designed to be a space ninja can level up their companions is to do nothing and not be a space ninja (it's a bold statement, and is not completely true nor false).

Companions take no affinity from the owner's kills making players turn from actually playing the game and just waiting for their companion to kill enemies and use abilities so it can level up, part of this companions require 900,000 affinity points as well. However mission objectives and riven / challenges are the only thing a player can do to get experience without doing the previously mentioned things, and objectives reward minimal affinity and this generally is not a great idea. You can also get affinity for companions from other players kills because logically the owner can't grant affinity to their own pet / sentinel, which also was a very bad decision, as it causes people to literally join a mission, do nothing and wait for other players to get kills, which ruins the fun that warframe has to offer, staying away from your keyboard in one area, jumping up and down ( I know there is more involved to it than that) every 2 minutes to avoid afk timers is plain stupid for leveling companions, warframe is a game of space ninjas, not a game of afk and you are rewarded (very slowly).

It just makes no sense that a player has to wait for their companion to kill or use abilities, and also due to mod capacity at lower levels (grant it I am mastery rank 24) they cannot make the companion do any damage at all. And making it so leveling companions is just about joining a squad and letting your squad get all the kills is not "player interaction", If the player is supposed to be able to play the game, it would be best if they could actually level their companions in a normal fashion of killing enemies than completing 12 spy missions in a row just to forma it again, or join squads and "leech" affinity off of players who are playing the game properly and questioning why you are doing for the most part, nothing.

I just don't believe not allowing the owner of a companion to level their companion up by doing what they normally would do; "kill an enemy, affinity is rewarded", is a great idea, it has no player interaction included, therefore making the game for lack of a better word "boring". As far as I know, a lot things in the past have been changed to be more player interactive, I.e the saryn rework made it so you have to manage abilities better than just decorating your molt with spores, but this one problem has stood for as long as companions were introduced and has not at all been looked at, I believe it does deserve some attention.  

Edited February 15, 2019 by CaptainJLP
Correcting errors and information which could be mistaken

[LSG501]

Companion levelling is fine, they level up faster than pretty much anything else in the game in my experience.   No idea why yours is taking so long but mine level really quickly just doing normal missions, let alone doing something like hydron.

[CaptainJLP]

14 minutes ago, LSG501 said:

Companion levelling is fine, they level up faster than pretty much anything else in the game in my experience.   No idea why yours is taking so long but mine level really quickly just doing normal missions, let alone doing something like hydron.

They are fine in someways, but most the time it's just because teammates are a thing and they have the magic power of being able to kill enemies and level your companion, but how they are leveled up when you as their owner kill something needs to change as they get nothing, it just isn't that great for AI based companions, there is some exclusion to smeeta kavat as it provides buffs that can make it level faster. But still, it's just not fun when you as an owner can't share affinity to your own companion, it makes solo leveling them very time consuming, by just doing constant objectives (mostly spy), I was reading prior to this on how to level companions fast, found a thread, and a newer player said he has maxed out 8 weapons, 3 warframes and his taxon was still lvl 18, throughout star-chart progress. It is mostly due to fact he probably didn't have much squad play in that time period, but relying on squad play to level up is not a great idea. I just think they need to change that very slight aspect.

Edit: For all needs, I can go record a whole exterminate mission on adaro, sedna and prove that companions do not get any affinity from it unless they kill or use abilities. (In solo play)

Edited February 15, 2019 by CaptainJLP

[Teridax68]

Companions in general lack interactivity imo, which is why I think leveling them similarly feels boring, and why the system needs a redo. Ideally, they should exist to open up new gameplay opportunities in the middle of combat, but in practice they mostly boil down to some additional stats and Vacuum/Fetch. Leveling companions has little player interaction because there isn't actually that much to companions that players can play off of. If there were legitimate gameplay players could initiate or respond to with companions, that gameplay could be made a source of companion Affinity, which would make the companion leveling process interactive. 

[Steel_Rook]

The only decent way to level up your companion - especially if it's a Sentinel - is to leech off your own team-mates. Kills you score with your guns and abilities don't contribute XP to it. Hell, kills IT scores with its own weapon contribute XP to that weapon, rather than the Sentinel. The only way for the Sentinel to earn XP "normally" is by using its abilities, most of which are on long cooldowns and reward fairly little. Or - again - you can just leech. "Tenno Affinity" XP is distributed somewhat evenly among equipped items, so a large chunk of it goes directly to the Sentinel.

Personally, I feel the game's Affinity distribution system is pointlessly one-sided. Heavily loading XP gain on the item used for the "last hit" feels like a dated mechanic from a decades-old RPG, not a modern game in the 21st century. At this point, I'd personally be happy with a mostly even split of XP across all items from all sources. While the game wants us to level up our weapons by actually using them, that's never going to be a real requirement as long as Tenno Affinity is a thing, and it's always going to be a thing because there's no better way to distribute XP gained by the team.