Should Companions Be Unlockable Account Wide?

Nomadic_Atmoran

Simply put, as companion quests get longer. The replayability of these quests on more than one character starts to become time and effort consuming. Now Im not asking that these quests be blocked off or inaccessible to new characters. Only that an option to utilize these companions through the collection menu be granted to characters once one of the characters have already accessed the companion through gameplay.

Thoughts and opinions?

Kappachi

I wish they were, especially since they appear in the collectibles tab but are unusable until the quest is done.

Monte_Cristo

I'd say no, since the companion hasn't met your other toons yet. That's also why companion levels and gear are shared, but rapport isn't.
However, they could give a sort of "Have you met Ted" miniquest to speed up recruitment on other toons. Maybe once you get to max or high enough rapport, you get a letter of introduction that lets you meet the companion in a tavern with another toon, with the recruitment quest coming afterwards, but the companion now a follower. It'd just need a bit of new dialogue to change the starts of the recruit quests if done this way.
Example, for Bastian's, after meeting him in the tavern, he says he's going to the cave where you originally met him. When approaching the area, he disappears from your service til you untie him.

LunaFlora

no. your character meets them by doing their first quest and then gets to summon them. it's good like this.

one character knowing them already shouldn't make it possible for other characters to summon them before doing the first quest.

barney2525

heaven forbid players should have something they can't get really fast with no effort.

SilverBride

I wish.

At the very least stop making the quests longer and more difficult.

Elvenheart

Personally, I think we should have the option to skip the quest if we’ve already unlocked them once, but it should be optional. Not just to make them easier to get with our other characters, but for story reasons as well. Meaning, if one of my characters has assisted the companion during the unlock quest, it doesn’t make sense if all of our characters are in the same world and the same reality that suddenly our second character comes along and the events that our first character did to unlock the companion never happened and have to be done all over again.

IrisDupree

I'd say that they could make it where if you get a companion to max rapport and level with one character you get the option to skip the quest on alts. You have put the work in and doing it over and over is not exactly fun.

Monroe585

Yes.

Ragnork

Yes - in my game world my account is a family and so the companion meets your family for the first time and is then known by your family. This explains why levelling up is account wide, but respect is individual.
There could be a secondary quest, more limited in nature, to introduce the companion to individual family members. But re-doing the whole quest seems at odds with the "account wide" philosophy.

Bobargus

Yes please.

loosej

Yes

YstradClud

I don't really care as I only really play my two Templars (PC and console) who have them all unlocked but I am glad they have continued with the companions since their introduction in Blackwood.

VindictiveRidge

The main roadblock here is that some of the companion unlock quests ARE the "location" quests for the places where you find them. Bastian's unlock is Deepscorn Hollow's quest. Mirri's unlock is Doomvault Vulpinaz's quest. Same goes for Ember at Tor Draoich and Isobel at Castle Navire. Letting a player "skip" that quest just to open access to the companion means affecting the entire location.
The quests for Sharp-as-Night and Azandar al-Cybiades are notably different in that they are NOT similarly tied to a given location, which makes me wonder if the devs opted to do that to pave the way for a possible future "universal unlock" option. They likely can't go back and change the first four companions to untether them from the locations, but perhaps companion unlocks going forward will be similar.

jle30303

The quests for Sharp and Azander are also *very, very noticeably* a lot longer and a lot harder than those for the previous companions.

I mean. Bastian? Deepscorn Hollow is basically a delve without a skyshard. Mirri? Doomvault Vulpinaz is basically a delve without a skyshard.

Ember at Tor Draioch? You're mostly chasing around overland after things that have been turned into unexpected forms. There's almost no fighting at all except with incidental crocodiles and wisps. Even the wispmother at the final "undo Ember's previous mistake" ritual site can technically be avoided by stealth, and is in any case no tougher than a regular wispmother. The guardian in the Tor Draioch Library is a regular wimpy elite, no tougher than a troll. Ember is probably the *easiest* companion ever to get.

As for Isobel... Her three-part task. There's a fetch quest for a druid (no fighting involved, well maybe the occasional incidental wild spriggan, bear or wolf in the woods), a fetch-quest on a hilltop (fighting with incidental overland wild fauns involved), and a dungeon trek for a third item (basically a delve with two bosses, one mid-way, but even those are skippable since they don't drop anything you need, you're trying to get to the pack behind them, and if another player kills them, you're in luck, and there's nothing else but incidental spiders). She is still probably the most arduous of the initial four companions to chase after.

Whereas... Sharp and Azander both send you barrelling through a public dungeon, and these are two of the more difficult public dungeons that have been released, and even the minibosses in these dungeons have *mechanics* involving one-shots, invulnerability or both. Like, Bad Mans Hallows they are not.

Deter1UK

jle30303 wrote: »

The quests for Sharp and Azander are also *very, very noticeably* a lot longer and a lot harder than those for the previous companions.

.. Sharp and Azander both send you barrelling through a public dungeon, and these are two of the more difficult public dungeons that have been released, and even the minibosses in these dungeons have *mechanics* involving one-shots, invulnerability or both. Like, Bad Mans Hallows they are not.

Yep. my new little Argonian Arc Healer snuck all the way through on the coat-tails of a 2000 cp Templar, she threw out loads of mosly unnessessary heals as way of payment. The Templar was very kind, clearly knew what I was doing and paused to let me catch up when needed.

She'll go back in to do the dungeon properly later, but it made a little story all of its own and was very enjoyable.

At least it throws a bun to players complaing overland is too easy eh?

Treselegant

jle30303 wrote: »

The quests for Sharp and Azander are also *very, very noticeably* a lot longer and a lot harder than those for the previous companions.

I mean. Bastian? Deepscorn Hollow is basically a delve without a skyshard. Mirri? Doomvault Vulpinaz is basically a delve without a skyshard.

Ember at Tor Draioch? You're mostly chasing around overland after things that have been turned into unexpected forms. There's almost no fighting at all except with incidental crocodiles and wisps. Even the wispmother at the final "undo Ember's previous mistake" ritual site can technically be avoided by stealth, and is in any case no tougher than a regular wispmother. The guardian in the Tor Draioch Library is a regular wimpy elite, no tougher than a troll. Ember is probably the *easiest* companion ever to get.

As for Isobel... Her three-part task. There's a fetch quest for a druid (no fighting involved, well maybe the occasional incidental wild spriggan, bear or wolf in the woods), a fetch-quest on a hilltop (fighting with incidental overland wild fauns involved), and a dungeon trek for a third item (basically a delve with two bosses, one mid-way, but even those are skippable since they don't drop anything you need, you're trying to get to the pack behind them, and if another player kills them, you're in luck, and there's nothing else but incidental spiders). She is still probably the most arduous of the initial four companions to chase after.

Whereas... Sharp and Azander both send you barrelling through a public dungeon, and these are two of the more difficult public dungeons that have been released, and even the minibosses in these dungeons have *mechanics* involving one-shots, invulnerability or both. Like, Bad Mans Hallows they are not.

I absolutely hated Isobel's quest on High Isle: it seemed so unnecessarily long for a pretty simple story and appeared to me to be pointlessly padded out for no good reason. I thought perhaps after the reaction from players of 'hmm, this is a bit long and tedious' the devs would take that on board but they really outdid themselves with the length of Necrom's two companion quests. I was so miserable and bored testing out those on pts - Azander's in particular - that I ended up logging out and doing something else for while rather than continueing with Necrom.

Ultimately, I've been on the fence about the issue of skipping companion quests since High Isle. I feel for the sake of ESO having some sort of rp element we should have to meet the companion and help them out before they agree to follow us around, which seems a simple enough concept, but then the quests keep getting longer and more laborious and I'm really not here for that.

If they're going to continue to drag out pretty basic stories into hour-long snooze fests then there should be a way to skip the quest. Maybe you can do it on one character and like the tutorial you'd get 'you've completed this on another character, would you like to skip?' on subsequent characters. I don't like the idea of less role play in game but something has to give. If we're not going to have any kind of skip then at least someone needs to step in and start reining in the size of these quests.

Forcing players to spend more time in the game by making previously straight forward tasks take longer and longer isn't going to help retain player attention. It artificially increases the time a player might spend in a zone but it's total folly in the long run as it just annoys people. This does seem to be the current philosphy for the game's development however...

TybaltKaine

ESO is an MMO. Replay value is part of the point.

Wow

It shouldn't. But they should add option to skip their quest if people wants to.

joergino

Those companion quest have absolutely no replay value. They are only a pain to repeat, especially the two in Necrom.

Twig_Garlicshine

Nah.

They should increase the difficulty to scale up double for each alt a player does it on.
It'll give a sense of progression and achievement for each and every alt companion.
Players base their feelings of fulfillment on their achievements in games.

They should also scale up the difficulty for each time you do overland, dungeon, and trial content too.

/s

Sheridan

Elvenheart wrote: »

it doesn’t make sense if all of our characters are in the same world and the same reality that suddenly our second character comes along and the events that our first character did to unlock the companion never happened and have to be done all over again.

All of your characters are in different worlds. They've never even met each other, never can, and and never will. The only form of communication they have is silently leaving things for each other through some interdimensional hole called "the bank". By that logic all of the game quests should be account-wide, because when your second character comes along and suddenly all of the Prophet and Planemeld and Daedric War and Gray Host and Ascendant Order stuff (et cetera) has to be done all over again, doesn't make any sense either.

Personally, that's why I always only play one character. For story reason.

freespirit

Another thing to add to the weirdness of AWA!

Massively ruin replayability on subsequent characters for some content/achievements but leave in place odd little pockets of "why, just why??"

starlizard70ub17_ESO

IrisDupree wrote: »

I'd say that they could make it where if you get a companion to max rapport and level with one character you get the option to skip the quest on alts. You have put the work in and doing it over and over is not exactly fun.

This would be the best option, I've already got Isobel wanting 3 of my characters to do more of her quest line and I just don't want too lol.

k9mouse

I say YES! I have 23 characters. 20 on NA and 3 on EU. It just a pain in the butt to have on all characters. Either make short and sweet or unlockable account wide.

Ragnork

TybaltKaine wrote: »

ESO is an MMO. Replay value is part of the point.

I totally agree this is an MMORPG, however with the advent of account wide accomplishments much of the replay value has been removed.
That said the unlocking of companions feels more of a chore than an achievement.

Tesman85

Elvenheart wrote: »

Personally, I think we should have the option to skip the quest if we’ve already unlocked them once, but it should be optional. Not just to make them easier to get with our other characters, but for story reasons as well. Meaning, if one of my characters has assisted the companion during the unlock quest, it doesn’t make sense if all of our characters are in the same world and the same reality that suddenly our second character comes along and the events that our first character did to unlock the companion never happened and have to be done all over again.

I second this, precisely because the player characters (at least partly) inhabiting the same time-space continuum. They share a bank, mounts, assistants etc. already, so why not companions? Besides, it's such a bother doing all the recruit quests with a bunch of characters over and over again. On the other hand, I like the idea of the companions having a separate relationship with each character. So maybe a very short introduction "quest" could be nice, after one PC has unlocked the companion (and maybe maxed the rapport and done the questlines). Something like the free inn room quest; the character just meets the companion in an inn or somewhere and he/she is like: "Oh, my great friend who's your acquaintance told me you could need my assistance. Nice to meet you and happy to help." And that's it. The thing could be started as a letter in the inventory or a free quest starter in the crown store.

Tandor

LunaFlora wrote: »

no. your character meets them by doing their first quest and then gets to summon them. it's good like this.

one character knowing them already shouldn't make it possible for other characters to summon them before doing the first quest.

This.

BXR_Lonestar

LunaFlora wrote: »

no. your character meets them by doing their first quest and then gets to summon them. it's good like this.

one character knowing them already shouldn't make it possible for other characters to summon them before doing the first quest.

In principal I would agree, but then it would make absolutely NO sense that when you summon them, they have progress that you made with your other characters (in terms of skill lines and gear). If that is going to be the case, then each of your characters should be able to have the same companion with a different build/setup to mesh well with that character.

Lets at least be consistent.

Personally, I would prefer to go through the storyline quest once with my main character, and then just have access to the companion on my other characters. I don't want to play through the damn storyline every time for each character.

Maitsukas

Companions develop friendships with your characters, not with your account.

Besides, how would you work around unlocking Mirri? Her quest has choices that affect the fate of the characters involved with Doomvault Vulpinaz, including her brother's (which in turn will affect the dialogue with her at the end of the Blackwood Main Storyline).

Marcus684

It'd be nice to have the option to unlock them on all characters at once, or at least have a way to shortcut it after the first. Having to run the exact same unlock quest on 17 alts gets pretty tedious.