Companions - When is it enough?

Araneae6537

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

The only reason I am not looking forward to more Companions is because of the long tedious grinds to unlock them. Yes I know I don't "need" to unlock all of them, and i know I don't "need" to unlock them on every character, but unlocking Companions doesn't "need" to be a long tedious grind either.

They should either shorten these quest chains to be comparable with how they were with our first Companions, or if they want a longer story for them, give us the option to skip the unlocking quests on alts, just like they did with the Tales of Tribute tutorial.

I disagree with this. I don't think narrative should be sacrificed in favor of convenience. That ultimately ends with us getting low quality content and poorly written stories.

What is the point of a well written story if we have to do it so many times that we just try to get through it as quickly as possible? I'm not enjoying the story the 2nd or 3rd or 7th time around... I'm just wanting to get it over with. This was especially true with Azandar and Sharp's stories, which is a real shame because they are by far my favorite Companions so far.

I'm in favor of the optional unlock. I'm not in favor of cutting content. The point is that we shouldn't be diminishing the quality of content for people who want to rush it 7 times. We SHOULD get an optional skip. That's the only acceptable scenario here. Lowering content quality for those who enjoy it is not. Advocating for decreased content quality is a mistake that will come back to bite all of us.

I'm fully behind you for the optional unlocks and always have been, but pushing for the lowering of content quality for others is not something I'll support under any circumstances.

Agree with this completely.

I am the type of person that doesn't tend to want to redo things soon after. There are games I have played multiple times, but I usually have to wait a long time between the replays, because I remember the story. It doesn't matter how good the story is.

What that means ,for me at least, is that I would far prefer to have enjoyable, quality writing, with optional 'skips' for people who want to do it multiple times, rather than have the story quality be tanked so that people can rush doing it on alts.

This way I get to enjoy a quality story the first (and likely only) time I play through it, while others can skip that content on their second+ playthroughs.

Same. I spread out unlocking companions on multiple characters for precisely this reason.

To ask for the quests to be shorter or abbreviated for those who feel compelled to unlock them on ALL characters immediately or whatever other reason, might as well ask the same for ALL quests, maybe I feel compelled to rush through Necrom on every character to unlock the books in quest areas or just because I must have ALL THE THINGS. That reasoning could be taken ad absurdism until anything any of us enjoys is removed from the game.

ArchangelIsraphel

Araneae6537 wrote: »

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

The only reason I am not looking forward to more Companions is because of the long tedious grinds to unlock them. Yes I know I don't "need" to unlock all of them, and i know I don't "need" to unlock them on every character, but unlocking Companions doesn't "need" to be a long tedious grind either.

They should either shorten these quest chains to be comparable with how they were with our first Companions, or if they want a longer story for them, give us the option to skip the unlocking quests on alts, just like they did with the Tales of Tribute tutorial.

I disagree with this. I don't think narrative should be sacrificed in favor of convenience. That ultimately ends with us getting low quality content and poorly written stories.

What is the point of a well written story if we have to do it so many times that we just try to get through it as quickly as possible? I'm not enjoying the story the 2nd or 3rd or 7th time around... I'm just wanting to get it over with. This was especially true with Azandar and Sharp's stories, which is a real shame because they are by far my favorite Companions so far.

I'm in favor of the optional unlock. I'm not in favor of cutting content. The point is that we shouldn't be diminishing the quality of content for people who want to rush it 7 times. We SHOULD get an optional skip. That's the only acceptable scenario here. Lowering content quality for those who enjoy it is not. Advocating for decreased content quality is a mistake that will come back to bite all of us.

I'm fully behind you for the optional unlocks and always have been, but pushing for the lowering of content quality for others is not something I'll support under any circumstances.

Agree with this completely.

I am the type of person that doesn't tend to want to redo things soon after. There are games I have played multiple times, but I usually have to wait a long time between the replays, because I remember the story. It doesn't matter how good the story is.

What that means ,for me at least, is that I would far prefer to have enjoyable, quality writing, with optional 'skips' for people who want to do it multiple times, rather than have the story quality be tanked so that people can rush doing it on alts.

This way I get to enjoy a quality story the first (and likely only) time I play through it, while others can skip that content on their second+ playthroughs.

Same. I spread out unlocking companions on multiple characters for precisely this reason.

To ask for the quests to be shorter or abbreviated for those who feel compelled to unlock them on ALL characters immediately or whatever other reason, might as well ask the same for ALL quests, maybe I feel compelled to rush through Necrom on every character to unlock the books in quest areas or just because I must have ALL THE THINGS. That reasoning could be taken ad absurdism until anything any of us enjoys is removed from the game.

Exactly this. This right here is why I'll never support requests to shorten and diminish content quality. It will end badly for everyone involved.

I'm always saying be careful what you wish for, you may just get it, and not in the way you think- I think this applies more than ever with requests like these. We do not want to encourage ZOS to shorten future quest content, at all.

SilverBride

Araneae6537 wrote: »

To ask for the quests to be shorter or abbreviated for those who feel compelled to unlock them on ALL characters immediately or whatever other reason, might as well ask the same for ALL quests, maybe I feel compelled to rush through Necrom on every character to unlock the books in quest areas or just because I must have ALL THE THINGS. That reasoning could be taken ad absurdism until anything any of us enjoys is removed from the game.

They did it for Tales of Tribute.

Necrotech_Master

Araneae6537 wrote: »

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

The only reason I am not looking forward to more Companions is because of the long tedious grinds to unlock them. Yes I know I don't "need" to unlock all of them, and i know I don't "need" to unlock them on every character, but unlocking Companions doesn't "need" to be a long tedious grind either.

They should either shorten these quest chains to be comparable with how they were with our first Companions, or if they want a longer story for them, give us the option to skip the unlocking quests on alts, just like they did with the Tales of Tribute tutorial.

I disagree with this. I don't think narrative should be sacrificed in favor of convenience. That ultimately ends with us getting low quality content and poorly written stories.

What is the point of a well written story if we have to do it so many times that we just try to get through it as quickly as possible? I'm not enjoying the story the 2nd or 3rd or 7th time around... I'm just wanting to get it over with. This was especially true with Azandar and Sharp's stories, which is a real shame because they are by far my favorite Companions so far.

I'm in favor of the optional unlock. I'm not in favor of cutting content. The point is that we shouldn't be diminishing the quality of content for people who want to rush it 7 times. We SHOULD get an optional skip. That's the only acceptable scenario here. Lowering content quality for those who enjoy it is not. Advocating for decreased content quality is a mistake that will come back to bite all of us.

I'm fully behind you for the optional unlocks and always have been, but pushing for the lowering of content quality for others is not something I'll support under any circumstances.

Agree with this completely.

I am the type of person that doesn't tend to want to redo things soon after. There are games I have played multiple times, but I usually have to wait a long time between the replays, because I remember the story. It doesn't matter how good the story is.

What that means ,for me at least, is that I would far prefer to have enjoyable, quality writing, with optional 'skips' for people who want to do it multiple times, rather than have the story quality be tanked so that people can rush doing it on alts.

This way I get to enjoy a quality story the first (and likely only) time I play through it, while others can skip that content on their second+ playthroughs.

Same. I spread out unlocking companions on multiple characters for precisely this reason.

To ask for the quests to be shorter or abbreviated for those who feel compelled to unlock them on ALL characters immediately or whatever other reason, might as well ask the same for ALL quests, maybe I feel compelled to rush through Necrom on every character to unlock the books in quest areas or just because I must have ALL THE THINGS. That reasoning could be taken ad absurdism until anything any of us enjoys is removed from the game.

so you want to have to repeat stuff like the tales of tribute intro quest to be able to play it on other characters?

this is not in any way asking for them to shorten content, its asking to make repeating content to unlock stuff easier

we used to have to play through the entire tribute tutorial to be able to use it, including the super super slow tutorial match with brahgas, but now they let us skip that by saying we already know how to play it

thats literally whats being asked for with companions, because we have to repeat those quests on every character to use the companion, we just want a way to say "we already met before" instead of running the questline repeatedly

theres a lot of story quests in this game i havent repeated or if i did, there was a gap of like 5+ years, because repeatedly doing story content is not really enjoyable to me

EdjeSwift

SilverBride wrote: »

They did it for Tales of Tribute.

There's a difference between "Yeah I already know how to play this card game" and "Yeah, I totally saved your brother/found your family/helped you become a knight etc."

SilverBride

EdjeSwift wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

They did it for Tales of Tribute.

There's a difference between "Yeah I already know how to play this card game" and "Yeah, I totally saved your brother/found your family/helped you become a knight etc."

But I do already know that. The same way every single character I have knows what level they are and they would start at that level whenever any new character unlocks them.

Erickson9610

SilverBride wrote: »

EdjeSwift wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

They did it for Tales of Tribute.

There's a difference between "Yeah I already know how to play this card game" and "Yeah, I totally saved your brother/found your family/helped you become a knight etc."

But I do already know that. The same way every single character I have knows what level they are and they would start at that level whenever any new character unlocks them.

The Companions don't know your other characters. Each player character exists in a separate copy of Tamriel — explaining why you are able to change the world at all multiple times across characters — so the only explanation for Companions sharing builds across characters is that they've always had it. Or, maybe that part is meant to be ambiguous, for the sake of making the system more manageable for players and the servers.

The point is, on each player character, the Companions need help. It would make no sense to essentially say "follow me and maybe I'll help you later if I feel like it". However, it does make sense to say "I already know how to play Tales of Tribute" or "I already know how to use siege weapons", because that knowledge is easily accessible in the world.

This is also why we can't skip the Scribing tutorial — "I already know how to Scribe" doesn't make sense because it was, up to that point, a long-lost art. But, for things like crafting certifications, it makes sense to be able to skip those with sufficient rank in the respective skill lines.

Elsonso

SilverBride wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

To ask for the quests to be shorter or abbreviated for those who feel compelled to unlock them on ALL characters immediately or whatever other reason, might as well ask the same for ALL quests, maybe I feel compelled to rush through Necrom on every character to unlock the books in quest areas or just because I must have ALL THE THINGS. That reasoning could be taken ad absurdism until anything any of us enjoys is removed from the game.

They did it for Tales of Tribute.

If the made us do it every time for ToT, even fewer people would be playing it…

Erickson9610 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

EdjeSwift wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

They did it for Tales of Tribute.

There's a difference between "Yeah I already know how to play this card game" and "Yeah, I totally saved your brother/found your family/helped you become a knight etc."

But I do already know that. The same way every single character I have knows what level they are and they would start at that level whenever any new character unlocks them.

The Companions don't know your other characters. Each player character exists in a separate copy of Tamriel — explaining why you are able to change the world at all multiple times across characters — so the only explanation for Companions sharing builds across characters is that they've always had it. Or, maybe that part is meant to be ambiguous, for the sake of making the system more manageable for players and the servers.

The point is, on each player character, the Companions need help. It would make no sense to essentially say "follow me and maybe I'll help you later if I feel like it". However, it does make sense to say "I already know how to play Tales of Tribute" or "I already know how to use siege weapons", because that knowledge is easily accessible in the world.

This is also why we can't skip the Scribing tutorial — "I already know how to Scribe" doesn't make sense because it was, up to that point, a long-lost art. But, for things like crafting certifications, it makes sense to be able to skip those with sufficient rank in the respective skill lines.

Well… it is the same companion across the account. If Joe Bob levels them, outfits them, and sets their skill, and that is what Sally Bob gets to use, then the separate copy thing is out the window and lost at sea.

Erickson9610

Elsonso wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

To ask for the quests to be shorter or abbreviated for those who feel compelled to unlock them on ALL characters immediately or whatever other reason, might as well ask the same for ALL quests, maybe I feel compelled to rush through Necrom on every character to unlock the books in quest areas or just because I must have ALL THE THINGS. That reasoning could be taken ad absurdism until anything any of us enjoys is removed from the game.

They did it for Tales of Tribute.

If the made us do it every time for ToT, even fewer people would be playing it…

Erickson9610 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

EdjeSwift wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

They did it for Tales of Tribute.

There's a difference between "Yeah I already know how to play this card game" and "Yeah, I totally saved your brother/found your family/helped you become a knight etc."

But I do already know that. The same way every single character I have knows what level they are and they would start at that level whenever any new character unlocks them.

The Companions don't know your other characters. Each player character exists in a separate copy of Tamriel — explaining why you are able to change the world at all multiple times across characters — so the only explanation for Companions sharing builds across characters is that they've always had it. Or, maybe that part is meant to be ambiguous, for the sake of making the system more manageable for players and the servers.

The point is, on each player character, the Companions need help. It would make no sense to essentially say "follow me and maybe I'll help you later if I feel like it". However, it does make sense to say "I already know how to play Tales of Tribute" or "I already know how to use siege weapons", because that knowledge is easily accessible in the world.

This is also why we can't skip the Scribing tutorial — "I already know how to Scribe" doesn't make sense because it was, up to that point, a long-lost art. But, for things like crafting certifications, it makes sense to be able to skip those with sufficient rank in the respective skill lines.

Well… it is the same companion across the account. If Joe Bob levels them, outfits them, and sets their skill, and that is what Sally Bob gets to use, then the separate copy thing is out the window and lost at sea.

How would you explain the Companion needing help again if they'd already been helped on another character? Or, take a step back and consider non-Companion characters — are all quest NPCs the exact same people across iterations? Do they retain knowledge of what each player character in all of ESO has done?

I do think that the assumption that the Companions individually changing their skills/gear/appearance to match all of your player characters is purely a convenience feature for players (and to reduce the space needed for their loadouts on the servers) and it can be possibly explained in-lore by those Companions deciding to change their appearance and skills while they aren't with any individual player character.

In other words, we never see the Companion change their equipment on two of our player characters at the exact same time, so it's possible they decided to change to the exact same appearance for each player character, independent of what stage of their questline each player character is on.

Elvenheart

Fata1moose wrote: »

Would be cool if you could adopt kids and they placed kids around the cities. Adds immersion not only to the system but the game overall.

Almost every day somewhere I see misbehaving children whose stressed out parents allow to run wild in public. I don’t want those children to be allowed in Tamriel. 🤣

Elvenheart

Bo0137 wrote: »

No. Companions should keep getting released over and over. No end to that please.

In fact, I envision a use for an abundance of companions. My idea is a bulletin board, with tasks/missions to assign your companions around Tamriel.

The bulleting board is a furnishing, to be placed in your houses like the armory station.

The missions would be very diverse. Escorting a caravan, delivering a letter, dealing with a rat plague in a small town, hunting a beast that's been causing problems... And they would reset daily/weekly.

These missions have a success rate; and it is based off the level of your companion, their gear, their skills unlocked and how loyal to you they are (based on their rapport).

You can assign more than one companion to a single mission to increase the success rate. But these assigned companions will be unavailable during the task (which should be a few minutes or a few hours).

These missions should have "difficulty tiers", which would affect the succes rate and the time it takes to be completed.

There could be "affixes" tied to these tasks which would make it harder/easier for a specific companion to run. For example: escorting a caravan with the "urgency" affix benefits from the quickened trait on gear and from being completed by a knight; it gets harder if you assign a companion with bad reputation with the justice, or a companion with no buff skills.

Completing these missions would reward you with gold, materials, companion gear, companion exp (including exp with a specific guild, should the quest be assigned by said guild), companion rapport and, ultimately, a new material used to upgrade companion gear.

I would absolutely love this!

TaSheen

Elvenheart wrote: »

Fata1moose wrote: »

Would be cool if you could adopt kids and they placed kids around the cities. Adds immersion not only to the system but the game overall.

Almost every day somewhere I see misbehaving children whose stressed out parents allow to run wild in public. I don’t want those children to be allowed in Tamriel. 🤣

Yeah, I had more than enough of bratty kids in Skyrim - and I never ever interacted with them at all.

Erickson9610

Fata1moose wrote: »

Would be cool if you could adopt kids and they placed kids around the cities. Adds immersion not only to the system but the game overall.

While there are child characters in other MMORPGs, I'm not entirely sure the addition of them in this one would be desirable.

It seems like their only purpose would be to give dialogue, as it's unlikely they'd be able to be pickpocketed, slain, or anything other than be a witness for the Justice system. It would be an annoyance having to deal with child characters which can't be removed but which can report crimes — they'd basically be Guards except they don't try to arrest you.

SilverBride

Erickson9610 wrote: »

The Companions don't know your other characters.

Then how can any of my characters put the Companion houseguests in their house? Even the characters that have only neutral or negative rapport with the Companion? And even if they haven't unlocked and "met" them yet?

Necrotech_Master

Erickson9610 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

EdjeSwift wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

They did it for Tales of Tribute.

There's a difference between "Yeah I already know how to play this card game" and "Yeah, I totally saved your brother/found your family/helped you become a knight etc."

But I do already know that. The same way every single character I have knows what level they are and they would start at that level whenever any new character unlocks them.

The Companions don't know your other characters. Each player character exists in a separate copy of Tamriel — explaining why you are able to change the world at all multiple times across characters — so the only explanation for Companions sharing builds across characters is that they've always had it. Or, maybe that part is meant to be ambiguous, for the sake of making the system more manageable for players and the servers.

The point is, on each player character, the Companions need help. It would make no sense to essentially say "follow me and maybe I'll help you later if I feel like it". However, it does make sense to say "I already know how to play Tales of Tribute" or "I already know how to use siege weapons", because that knowledge is easily accessible in the world.

This is also why we can't skip the Scribing tutorial — "I already know how to Scribe" doesn't make sense because it was, up to that point, a long-lost art. But, for things like crafting certifications, it makes sense to be able to skip those with sufficient rank in the respective skill lines.

if you chose to skip the quest, it would just auto complete the quest, not "help them later"

thats the point of a skip

now if they just let us use the companions without even needing to interact for the skip option, that would just save me extra time, because i will unlikely repeat those quests anyway

the scribing intro (first quest) takes less than 5 minutes to do, theres hardly any combat or dialogs involved, but your not required to do all of the wings again to access scribing, its virtually equivalent to skipping the tribute tutorial in my opinion

Araneae6537

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

The only reason I am not looking forward to more Companions is because of the long tedious grinds to unlock them. Yes I know I don't "need" to unlock all of them, and i know I don't "need" to unlock them on every character, but unlocking Companions doesn't "need" to be a long tedious grind either.

They should either shorten these quest chains to be comparable with how they were with our first Companions, or if they want a longer story for them, give us the option to skip the unlocking quests on alts, just like they did with the Tales of Tribute tutorial.

I disagree with this. I don't think narrative should be sacrificed in favor of convenience. That ultimately ends with us getting low quality content and poorly written stories.

What is the point of a well written story if we have to do it so many times that we just try to get through it as quickly as possible? I'm not enjoying the story the 2nd or 3rd or 7th time around... I'm just wanting to get it over with. This was especially true with Azandar and Sharp's stories, which is a real shame because they are by far my favorite Companions so far.

I'm in favor of the optional unlock. I'm not in favor of cutting content. The point is that we shouldn't be diminishing the quality of content for people who want to rush it 7 times. We SHOULD get an optional skip. That's the only acceptable scenario here. Lowering content quality for those who enjoy it is not. Advocating for decreased content quality is a mistake that will come back to bite all of us.

I'm fully behind you for the optional unlocks and always have been, but pushing for the lowering of content quality for others is not something I'll support under any circumstances.

Agree with this completely.

I am the type of person that doesn't tend to want to redo things soon after. There are games I have played multiple times, but I usually have to wait a long time between the replays, because I remember the story. It doesn't matter how good the story is.

What that means ,for me at least, is that I would far prefer to have enjoyable, quality writing, with optional 'skips' for people who want to do it multiple times, rather than have the story quality be tanked so that people can rush doing it on alts.

This way I get to enjoy a quality story the first (and likely only) time I play through it, while others can skip that content on their second+ playthroughs.

Same. I spread out unlocking companions on multiple characters for precisely this reason.

To ask for the quests to be shorter or abbreviated for those who feel compelled to unlock them on ALL characters immediately or whatever other reason, might as well ask the same for ALL quests, maybe I feel compelled to rush through Necrom on every character to unlock the books in quest areas or just because I must have ALL THE THINGS. That reasoning could be taken ad absurdism until anything any of us enjoys is removed from the game.

so you want to have to repeat stuff like the tales of tribute intro quest to be able to play it on other characters?

this is not in any way asking for them to shorten content, its asking to make repeating content to unlock stuff easier

we used to have to play through the entire tribute tutorial to be able to use it, including the super super slow tutorial match with brahgas, but now they let us skip that by saying we already know how to play it

thats literally whats being asked for with companions, because we have to repeat those quests on every character to use the companion, we just want a way to say "we already met before" instead of running the questline repeatedly

theres a lot of story quests in this game i havent repeated or if i did, there was a gap of like 5+ years, because repeatedly doing story content is not really enjoyable to me

I have no opinion about the ToT intro because I’ve not done it as I have no interest in ToT.

I don’t see the logic for skipping companion quests any more than being able to skip zone quests (hey, my friend already saved your kingdom so you can just call me the “Savior of _____” as well)

I mean, so long as it was truly optional, I don’t care if ZOS gives the option to skip any or all quests, but I argue against it because I fear, like how accountwide achievements were implemented, that it would not be.

SilverBride

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I don’t see the logic for skipping companion quests any more than being able to skip zone quests (hey, my friend already saved your kingdom so you can just call me the “Savior of _____” as well)

The Companions aren't just quests. They are a completely new system that was added to the game, just like Tales of Tribute and Scribing.

Tales of Tribute has the option to skip the tutorial once it had been completed on one character.

Scribing allows the player the option to only do the very first part once it had been completed on one character.

The Companions are also a system and should be given the same consideration as these others.

TaSheen

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I have no opinion about the ToT intro because I’ve not done it as I have no interest in ToT.

I don’t see the logic for skipping companion quests any more than being able to skip zone quests (hey, my friend already saved your kingdom so you can just call me the “Savior of _____” as well)

I mean, so long as it was truly optional, I don’t care if ZOS gives the option to skip any or all quests, but I argue against it because I fear, like how accountwide achievements were implemented, that it would not be.

Yeah. This is the classic reasoning behind "be very careful what you ask for". I LOVE the Psijic and Scribing questlines - I don't want ZOS to decide to drop to throw-away much shorter less interesting questing.

Bradyfjord

I don't like the companion quests. All I want out of the system is help with soloing content like world bosses and dungeons. For that purpose they don't seem worth it since they die so easy. So I would rather have a deeper overland quests or another dungeon maybe.

SilverBride

Bradyfjord wrote: »

I don't like the companion quests. All I want out of the system is help with soloing content like world bosses and dungeons. For that purpose they don't seem worth it since they die so easy. So I would rather have a deeper overland quests or another dungeon maybe.

They don't die nearly as easy if you set them up with gear and builds.

JemadarofCaerSalis

I personally feel that people should at least do the quest once.

After that, if they want to skip it? So what, it isn't hurting me.

However, having the original quest be shortened because there isn't an option to skip the quests once you have already done it once, does 'hurt' me in the sense that it lessens my enjoyment of the one time I will most likely ever play that quest.

(again, I completely agree with the ability to skip the initial quests, as long as you have played through it normally. Think of the skyshard hunter and the ability to buy all the sky shards of a particular region in the crown store, once you have found them normally first, or the ability to buy 'max' guild levels, once you have a character that reached max guild level)

EdjeSwift

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

(again, I completely agree with the ability to skip the initial quests, as long as you have played through it normally. Think of the skyshard hunter and the ability to buy all the sky shards of a particular region in the crown store, once you have found them normally first, or the ability to buy 'max' guild levels, once you have a character that reached max guild level)

I can actually see them crown storing companion unlocks as an implementation of this. As people have said here and in other threads, be careful what you wish for.

SilverBride

EdjeSwift wrote: »

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

(again, I completely agree with the ability to skip the initial quests, as long as you have played through it normally. Think of the skyshard hunter and the ability to buy all the sky shards of a particular region in the crown store, once you have found them normally first, or the ability to buy 'max' guild levels, once you have a character that reached max guild level)

I can actually see them crown storing this if they do implement it.

Why? They did it for Tales of Tribute and Scribing without the Crown Store.

Khami

JustLovely wrote: »

We have too many companions now. ESO is an MMO and there are plenty of other people in game and guilds we can get together with to complete content. I question the logic of having a companion system in an MMO all together.

Never played SWTOR have you? They give the player five companions that used to have different roles. Then took them away only to give the player new companions while trickling in the old companions back. Plus they've added dozens of new ones since 2017.

I've lost count on how many companions there are in that game. Base game with all eight classes were 40. Some of those don't come back to the players but many of the class companions are open for the other classes. Plus they added some to be purchased with cartel coins(equal to crowns in ESO) or gained by doing the season content stuff.

I think there is about five to six dozen companions in SWTOR. Six is not too many.

Khami

Syldras wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

We have too many companions now. ESO is an MMO and there are plenty of other people in game and guilds we can get together with to complete content.

Companions are content.

Yes they are. Especially the way the devs are adding them to the game. Do a quest to get them. Talk to them, learn about their lives before you met. Get their rapport up and get more quests.

Six companions are not too many when you compare them to the amount of companion in SWTOR. I think there is at least five or six dozen companions in that game.

Khami

SilverBride wrote: »

EdjeSwift wrote: »

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

(again, I completely agree with the ability to skip the initial quests, as long as you have played through it normally. Think of the skyshard hunter and the ability to buy all the sky shards of a particular region in the crown store, once you have found them normally first, or the ability to buy 'max' guild levels, once you have a character that reached max guild level)

I can actually see them crown storing this if they do implement it.

Why? They did it for Tales of Tribute and Scribing without the Crown Store.

Each character has to learn the skills stuff to scribe them. It's not like ToT where the deck is unlocked. The only thing that is account unlock with scribing is the color changes tied to achievements. The skill parts you put in the grimoire have to be learned by each character.

SilverBride

Khami wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

EdjeSwift wrote: »

JemadarofCaerSalis wrote: »

(again, I completely agree with the ability to skip the initial quests, as long as you have played through it normally. Think of the skyshard hunter and the ability to buy all the sky shards of a particular region in the crown store, once you have found them normally first, or the ability to buy 'max' guild levels, once you have a character that reached max guild level)

I can actually see them crown storing this if they do implement it.

Why? They did it for Tales of Tribute and Scribing without the Crown Store.

Each character has to learn the skills stuff to scribe them. It's not like ToT where the deck is unlocked. The only thing that is account unlock with scribing is the color changes tied to achievements. The skill parts you put in the grimoire have to be learned by each character.

But each character doesn't have to do all the quests to begin actually Scribing. If they did the same with Companions each character would still have to develop their own Rapport which would be comparable to how Scribing is set up.

Erickson9610

SilverBride wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

The Companions don't know your other characters.

Then how can any of my characters put the Companion houseguests in their house? Even the characters that have only neutral or negative rapport with the Companion? And even if they haven't unlocked and "met" them yet?

The Companion Houseguests are considered strangers to player characters they've never met. It's the same with non-Companion Houseguests, who only have unique dialogue if the person interacting with them have completed certain quests previously.

Houseguests can be put in your player home for gameplay convenience, but it could be explained as those Houseguests just visiting the house for whatever reason. Those player houses belong to all of your player characters (as it belongs to your account) which is why you can edit your furnishings in all of your homes on any of your characters.

Erickson9610

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

EdjeSwift wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

They did it for Tales of Tribute.

There's a difference between "Yeah I already know how to play this card game" and "Yeah, I totally saved your brother/found your family/helped you become a knight etc."

But I do already know that. The same way every single character I have knows what level they are and they would start at that level whenever any new character unlocks them.

The Companions don't know your other characters. Each player character exists in a separate copy of Tamriel — explaining why you are able to change the world at all multiple times across characters — so the only explanation for Companions sharing builds across characters is that they've always had it. Or, maybe that part is meant to be ambiguous, for the sake of making the system more manageable for players and the servers.

The point is, on each player character, the Companions need help. It would make no sense to essentially say "follow me and maybe I'll help you later if I feel like it". However, it does make sense to say "I already know how to play Tales of Tribute" or "I already know how to use siege weapons", because that knowledge is easily accessible in the world.

This is also why we can't skip the Scribing tutorial — "I already know how to Scribe" doesn't make sense because it was, up to that point, a long-lost art. But, for things like crafting certifications, it makes sense to be able to skip those with sufficient rank in the respective skill lines.

if you chose to skip the quest, it would just auto complete the quest, not "help them later"

thats the point of a skip

now if they just let us use the companions without even needing to interact for the skip option, that would just save me extra time, because i will unlikely repeat those quests anyway

the scribing intro (first quest) takes less than 5 minutes to do, theres hardly any combat or dialogs involved, but your not required to do all of the wings again to access scribing, its virtually equivalent to skipping the tribute tutorial in my opinion

Skipping the intro quest would skip over dialogue choices which may be referenced later on in the Companion's questline. It also doesn't make sense to completely skip the events of their introductory quest — there's no good explanation for how that would actually be possible by simply talking to the Companion.

Kappachi

SilverBride wrote: »

We don't "need" to do anything in game. We could log in and just stand in town all day but that's not how most people play.

I enjoy having things and completing things. I complete every quest in every zone on all my characters because that is how I choose to play. It reasonable to ask to make unlocking Companions less of a tedious chore, especially since they already have some account bound features.

And I honestly wonder if they plan to keep adding more and more Companions indefinitely or if there will come a time that they feel it's enough.

if they ever feel that it's enough they should release a creatable companion that's voiced for all races & genders, with maybe some quests depending on their class. then I wouldn't see any problem with there being no new companions.