Should Companions Be Unlockable Account Wide?

spartaxoxo

LannStone wrote: »

Just an observation - when my main maxes out a companion and makes him/her a houseguest, that houseguest is there for all characters on my account, yes?
If so, then all my characters on that account can already meet the companion in the house, without any other quest.
See where this is going?

Tying it the houseguest unlock would actually be a good idea! You can talk to the house guest to skip the quest.

LunaFlora

LannStone wrote: »

Just an observation - when my main maxes out a companion and makes him/her a houseguest, that houseguest is there for all characters on my account, yes?
If so, then all my characters on that account can already meet the companion in the house, without any other quest.
See where this is going?

and anyone who isn't your characters can meet them. houseguests aren't companions, they're different items, so i don't see where this is going

Auldwulfe

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.

And yet, my characters that haven't met Mirri, yet, get her little love bags in chests ......

Auldwulfe

f047ys3v3n

I would certainly like them unlocked for all my toons after I unlock them on the first. I am also definitely not going to go through all 20 or so of my toons and unlock all 6 companions on each.

Generally, my pattern is to unlock a companion and go through their entire quest once. I skipped this on bastion though because I don't want his stupid worthless potions forever larding up the inventory on all my toons. After I have played the content once I typically only pick on companions on other toons on a need basis. As in, if I play the toon a lot I will pick up a tank companion because it speeds the completion of content by volunteering it's face for a punching bag while I parse on the boss instead of play defense.

I think ZOS idea with their whole unlocking scheme was to create a grind for us under the cover of "immersion." The effect on me though is just to make new companions less interesting and therefore less of a draw when it comes to buying new content. I haven't even properly geared the two new guys as they take too long to unlock for me to be interested in getting them on a second toon and if I'm not going to do that why bother properly gearing them, I'll just use an existing tank. Its a pity as I like their personalities and enjoyed the quests. I just know I'm not going to enjoy those quests on repeat.

rpa

I unlocked the new companions for three of my characters (including a lowbie arcanist) within short time and it was quite dizzying experience. I think there is very little replay value left after doing it 3 times and its not 'immersive' after first.

Necrotech_Master

rpa wrote: »

I unlocked the new companions for three of my characters (including a lowbie arcanist) within short time and it was quite dizzying experience. I think there is very little replay value left after doing it 3 times and its not 'immersive' after first.

i unlocked the new companions on 3 toons as well

the first was with my main where i paid attention to the story and such, but the entire time i was dreading that i was going to have to do this with more characters if i wanted to use them

did it 2 more times on other toons, to see how easy it was to speed through, was thoroughly unenjoyable so i flat out stopped bothering as i already had the keepsakes at that point (why bother unlocking the companions for options when i have ones that already work good that most all of my toons already unlocked, and i still get the bonus of the new companions anyway)

LannStone

LunaFlora wrote: »

LannStone wrote: »

Just an observation - when my main maxes out a companion and makes him/her a houseguest, that houseguest is there for all characters on my account, yes?
If so, then all my characters on that account can already meet the companion in the house, without any other quest.
See where this is going?

and anyone who isn't your characters can meet them. houseguests aren't companions, they're different items, so i don't see where this is going

Well, I'll spell it out then.
If any character on your account can talk to a companion that's been made a houseguest, then any character on your account can meet that companion right there in the house and recruit him/her to travel together right then and there.
Why not?

LannStone

spartaxoxo wrote: »

LannStone wrote: »

Just an observation - when my main maxes out a companion and makes him/her a houseguest, that houseguest is there for all characters on my account, yes?
If so, then all my characters on that account can already meet the companion in the house, without any other quest.
See where this is going?

Tying it the houseguest unlock would actually be a good idea! You can talk to the house guest to skip the quest.

Yes, that's my point

Nomadic_Atmoran

TybaltKaine wrote: »

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

Literally put it in my OP that I wasn't asking for those quests to be inaccessible but apparently reading is definitely overpowered here on the forums.

NoSoup

I'm sure it will become a crown store upgrade at some point much like skyshards and guild lines.

Northwold

TybaltKaine wrote: »

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

Given that I can think of literally one story variation of any consequence in the entire game (two if you count Dark Stibbons on top of the main quest "who shall I choose" moment), I'm not sure replay value is its forte in the first place. There is essentially no meaningful choice in *any* of the game's quests. They run on rails. "Replay value" in the sense of playing the exact same quests over and over again for every little trifle is not obviously desirable? At least make skipping it optional.

Besides which I'm not sure replay value in the sense of running story quests over and over *is* what MMOs are about. The better ones are about providing perpetually varying gameplay with the same systems, not "repeat the exact same story quest the exact same way 100 times". Indeed, it's questionable that the majority of MMO players use multiple characters anyway!

Soarora

Optionally, absolutely. I might want to replay their quests but I deffo don't on every character.

KiltMaster

Yes. I don't want to do the same quest 20 times. I enjoy doing quests, don't get me wrong, but I don't want to memorize it word for word

polaris86

I hope they unlock companions accountwide at the next chapter, there are now 6 companions and they have somewhat long quests to unlock on each character. At least make it unlock when we get their permanent perk ability or their houseguest.

Wolfenbelle

Yesterday I finally got Ember to level 20. That was an awful grind. Now I have to level up her happiness with any character she is going to be a companion for...another grind. The happiness grind must be done for all characters paired with that companion. For this reason I only will ever have 2 companions: my first, Bastian and now Ember. And I will leave them each dedicated to one character.

Bastian is with my main, a Templar. Ember is with my new first-ever Khajiit who will be a thief. But I learned yesterday after pairing her with my Khajiit to sneak around Abah's Landing that Ember will fight a guard on her own even from sneak. This will not do. She is really good in combat situations though.

So yes, I would like all companions to be unlocked account wide when you do their first quest once, and I would like the happiness also unlocked account wide after doing it once. (I know some disagree with this, but doing two grinds per companion is not my idea of fun.)

Sauce_B055

In my opinion, everything related to completionism should be account-wide.
Achievements, skyshards, wayshrines, quests, dungeons and delves, blueprint and recipe knowledge, etc...
And with that, of course the option to do it all over again if that's what you want.

rpa

I did all new companion rapport quests with one char (Arcanist who is now lv 50 with silly experimental build) and stopped rappart grind with others. Nothing wrong with the quests but after doing exact same companion rapport quest twice in one sitting I found I just don't have interest to do any of that stuff more than once.

NotaDaedraWorshipper

Just like we can skip Tales of Tribute and other things now on alts, companions should have a "skip" option as well when talking to them on alts. That solves all issues. People can skip doing the quest if they want to, just go there and talk to the companion and it treats it like you have done the quest. Or people can decide to do it again if they want to.

I for one get tired doing the quests on alts. There's no variety on them, I can't do them in other ways for roleplay or variety, it's just trying to do them as fast as possible to get them over with.

Marcus684

The only saving grace for me for repeating the Companion quests for Azandar and Sharps is that it gives me the opportunity to grab skyshards and skill points in the dungeons you have to go to for their unlock quests. Other than that they're just unnecessary repeats, particularly for older Companions that don't require going to dungeons. I'm all for having the option to skip the quests on subsequent unlocks.

Necrotech_Master

Wolfenbelle wrote: »

Yesterday I finally got Ember to level 20. That was an awful grind. Now I have to level up her happiness with any character she is going to be a companion for...another grind. The happiness grind must be done for all characters paired with that companion. For this reason I only will ever have 2 companions: my first, Bastian and now Ember. And I will leave them each dedicated to one character.

Bastian is with my main, a Templar. Ember is with my new first-ever Khajiit who will be a thief. But I learned yesterday after pairing her with my Khajiit to sneak around Abah's Landing that Ember will fight a guard on her own even from sneak. This will not do. She is really good in combat situations though.

So yes, I would like all companions to be unlocked account wide when you do their first quest once, and I would like the happiness also unlocked account wide after doing it once. (I know some disagree with this, but doing two grinds per companion is not my idea of fun.)

you only have to do rapport with 1 character in order to get the keepsake, there is absolutely no reason to do rapport on more than 1 character unless you choose to

ive only ever bothered maxing the rapport on companions with my main, havent even touched it on other toons except through "natural" stuff gained over time (such as killing a WB with isobel grants rapport, so kind of happens passively)

the requirement for doing the quests on each toon is extremely annoying though as the companion is already an account wide unlock (and based on the companion Q&A it sounds that the devs going forward are going to be unwilling to change that), which is why going forward im only going to unlock companions on 2 characters, my main for the story and rapport, and a dps toon to powerlevel them so i can unlock the keepsake as fast as possible and then they can go gather dust, or ill just build them as alternate dps characters for my main

Tandor

NoSoup wrote: »

I'm sure it will become a crown store upgrade at some point much like skyshards and guild lines.

Agreed. If people ask often enough for something they think they should just have then eventually they will get it, but monetised, and then they'll complain instead about the way it was implemented.

I just wish ZOS would stop listening so much to those who suffer from completionism or just want to power-level things with their "alts" and cater a little more for those who actually want to play the game through more than once.

RaptorRodeoGod

You should have an option to skip the initial quest for them, like the tutorials. Best of both worlds