SilverBride wrote: »

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, just wanted to pop in and thank everyone for your comments regarding our new companions, Isobel and Ember. We've passed this thread along to the dev team to check out your thoughts.

@ZOS_Kevin

Will you please direct them to this thread, too? There is a real desire for more male companion choices and this thread shows the looks and qualities many of us are looking for. Many of us want strong and good looking (Bastian isn't) and flirty male companions.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/606614/male-companions/p1

The latest posts before you have literally been talking about how they don't want this.

That is their opinion. This is mine. Both are valid which is why there needs to be a wider variety.

I can repeat this back. There's a lot of "opinions" regarding what people think is attractive here and in that other thread stated in a way like they are facts and the only exisiting ones or held by the majority. Which of course is not accurate.
Taste is like butts, everyone has one and they are split.

Snamyap wrote: »

I find the lighthearted attitude of Ember a bit jarring with her being fine that I murder everyone and everything in sight. Gimme Arox as a companion!

This. I just want Arox. He doesn't need to fight, just comment on things and be small and feisty. Well, maybe he can do petty amounts of ankle-biting damage, since he keeps offering to shred ankles. Bonus points if you can scoop him up and carry him like a squirmy cat.

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

Ilsabet wrote: »

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, just wanted to pop in and thank everyone for your comments regarding our new companions, Isobel and Ember. We've passed this thread along to the dev team to check out your thoughts.

@ZOS_Kevin

Will you please direct them to this thread, too? There is a real desire for more male companion choices and this thread shows the looks and qualities many of us are looking for. Many of us want strong and good looking (Bastian isn't) and flirty male companions.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/606614/male-companions/p1

The latest posts before you have literally been talking about how they don't want this.

That is their opinion. This is mine. Both are valid which is why there needs to be a wider variety.

Taste is like butts, everyone has one and they are split.

What I'm hearing here is "whenever we do get a new male companion, he should have a nice butt."

I mean, I will not say no to that.

One important thing that helps me decide on trousers for outfits or a costume to use is: Do they remove the booty? If yes, then it's often a no go.

I have to admit that when I create a new character I don't do much with the chest but I pay particular attention to shaping the the hips, legs and butt. Butts matter!

SilverBride wrote: »

Ratinira wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Ratinira wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Many of us want strong and good looking (Bastian isn't) and flirty male companions

If you want ZOS to create a companion that is good looking by YOUR standarts you definitely must send them some pictures... othervise, you know, they may suddenly create a compation that is again not fitting you standarts of good-lookiness

I posted several pictures in this thread and others did, too.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/606614/male-companions/p1

Looked at the pictures. Reminded me why I thought that ESO had a problem with male character`s visual at all, thanks
Different people have different view on what is beautiful and what is not. Personally I would prefer not to see faces from the topic for more that a "give me a quest and disappear" moment.
Which leads to the point - no companion will please everyone... and any companion (and an npc) will always be an ugly irritating face for at least someone

Which is why we need a greater variety in looks, especially for the males. The pictures we posted in the other thread show that they are capable of creating male characters many of us find desirable. Please give us some like those.

Who are many? Thousand? Ten thousand?
10 people from forum who like the same character are not many. Even 100 are not many if you speak about millions of players...

Tenthirty2 wrote: »

• Ember is in it for the adventure and excitement.
  Opposite that is Mirri who's RBF makes me feel like she's been sworn to carry too many burdens (WHY can't we make them carry our stuff?)
  Or Bastian who, well, I'm not exactly sure what Bastian comes with me for. He acts like he'd be happier shining shoes or sitting on a beach staring at dead mudcrabs than to be dragged along on yet another adventure.
• Ember isn't preachy to the point of me dismissing her bcuz I don't feel like being nagged at.
• Ember doesn't care what style of gameplay I like. With my NB\thief she's totally fine with skullduggery (just dont get busted LOL)
• Ember doesn't spaz out when I accidentally harvest yet another torchbug that are ALL SO CONVENIENTLY PLACED AT WAYSHRINES AND OTHER NODES WHERE WE HAVE TO 'ACTIVATE' SOMETHING ZOS.
• Ember loves riding fast and doesn't care when I jump off cliffs.
• Ember doesn't like fish or fishing, ok I get that. Fishing is boring relaxing chill time. I have to be in the right mood for it, so I get her point.

To be fair to the other companions I don't hate them. But it is nice to finally have one who's just happy to be out kicking over rocks with me and getting into trouble instead of pulling out the pocket-parent every 5 minutes

Agreed on your Ember points and additionally (IDK abou Isobel since I haven't played with her enough to know yet) from a more technical POV her dialogue seems to have a much more varied range with some rare comments.

For example: I decided to not just unlock enough of the Thieves Guild to do the Heist for the +125 rapport and kept going with it all the way to level 12 so I went in and out of there about 100 times. In one of those occasions, and only one, going in she said "I wonder if someone here will arm wrestle me."

She seems more like a companion 2.0 which in a sense, both she and Isobel are,

I like Isobel, she's a beast of a tank. And i main a nightblade so it's nice to gain all those flanking bonuses while she holds aggro.

Lugaldu wrote: »

...since I only play in 1st person view anyway, so why bother with a body part I never see myself (actually like in real life)?

That got me curious so I made yet another new poll

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/608552/do-you-play-eso-in-first-person-view-third-person-or-both#latest

Treselegant wrote: »

this one hopes the next companions will be a bit older, more worldly and just a little bit less enthused.

I think a male companion character with this sort of attitude could be interesting and different. However, considering how sensitive some players are about having companions who don't validate their actions I can imagine such a character might have low interest. So I don't know.

Yeah players wouldn't be able to handle that kind of character. They're sensitive over Mirri doing tame and playful digs and Bastian being a morally upright person who believes in doing the right thing.

I really would love a snarky sarcastic personality similar to Elam Drals. I think it's because that's how I am myself IRL.

ElvenOverlord wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

ElvenOverlord wrote: »

Treselegant wrote: »

this one hopes the next companions will be a bit older, more worldly and just a little bit less enthused.

I think a male companion character with this sort of attitude could be interesting and different. However, considering how sensitive some players are about having companions who don't validate their actions I can imagine such a character might have low interest. So I don't know.

Yeah players wouldn't be able to handle that kind of character. They're sensitive over Mirri doing tame and playful digs and Bastian being a morally upright person who believes in doing the right thing.

It's not a matter of being sensitive. Not everyone finds rude comments "playful". Mirri's rude and passive aggressive comments are something I don't want to listen to when I'm trying to relax and have fun.

Meh. Her comments are harmless and pretty tame. But if she does bother someone then the solution to that is simple. Don't have her out.

I haven't had her out for a very long time now.

She also loses a lot of rapport with me whenever she says "This is so much better than reading!"

That was the last straw comment for me with Ember so I put her away for good. Awful line.

I like it when Ember tells me "You're terrifying, you know?" Is that wrong?

ectoplasmicninja wrote: »

... I really want to see existing companions developed more fully. Don't abandon Bastian and Mirri - I want to know what's up with his tattoos! I want to be invited to dinner with his sister and see if Quistley has settled down and maybe give the Silvelles some sort of comeuppance for the way they treated Bastian as a child. I want to meet Mirri's dad and help him out at some antiquity site that turns into a fiasco. There are so many good stories there that could be told...

Abelon wrote: »

With only 2 companions releasing a year, and considering the overland content difficulty, I expected the companion system to be a way to get more lore, more story, more rp, etc. I expected them to tell me things about places we go to, about people we meet. At least about the VERY MAJOR ones. You know... Like Bastian and Emeric... Did no one on the dev team think about that?

Instead we get really generic lines that I could do without. Like (and those are actual quotes) "I like campfires..." when coming across a random campfire. Or ""I love cities... " I mean, wow, Bastian... You like cities and campfires? Really? Literally ALL the cities? Or is it maybe this specific city we are in right now? You know, the one whose name wasn't programmed into your dialogue system.

Obiously making a proper companion like the ones in Skyrim would be a ton of work. But at the very least you could take some notes on which locations and NPCs are related to which character, and write some lines for those. Forgetting that Bastian has history with Emeric is sloppy and extremely immersion breaking. And Emeric is in the base game as well, so it's not even a problem with the voice actor not being there for a new chapter or whatever.

^^ All of this!

When the discussions were flowing just prior to the original companions being released, I had mentioned this in one of the threads.

I really hope that they wont be "one and done", release and forget products.

When we get new ones, there should also be a slew of "additional data" dumped into the previous companions at the same time.

ZOS really needs to continue offering more dialog with back-story, chat options, possibly new quests, proper (or new) reactions to locations/people, etc. to continue fleshing out and advancing ALL companions. This would ideally be done each time new companions are released.

Not very immersion friendly to expect someone whom we may have been adventuring with for a long while now, to never have anything new to say, constantly repeat the same things to us and/or never bring up new thoughts/comments/have a change of hearts on things ("You know, maybe cheese isn't so bad"), etc.

The companions should grow (with us and the game) over our time and travels together. Not just be stagnant "parrots" that are never changing from the time we initially "meet" them until the end of time.

EDIT: Spelling is hard.

Zenzuki wrote: »

ZOS really needs to continue offering more dialog with back-story, chat options, possibly new quests, proper (or new) reactions to locations/people, etc. to continue fleshing out and advancing ALL companions. This would ideally be done each time new companions are released.

Not very immersion friendly to expect someone whom we may have been adventuring with for a long while now, to never have anything new to say, constantly repeat the same things to us and/or never bring up new thoughts/comments/have a change of hearts on things ("You know, maybe cheese isn't so bad"), etc.

The companions should grow (with us and the game) over our time and travels together. Not just be stagnant "parrots" that are never changing from the time we initially "meet" them until the end of time.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if ZOS is treating the companion system as the kind of work-in-progress where each new set of companions is more fleshed-out and dynamic than the last (which is already something they're touting about Ember and Isobel) but the older ones aren't necessarily updated to bring them up to current spec. I'll be really interested to see what happens if and when a romance mechanic is added, and realistically I'm kind of expecting that to only be a thing with companions introduced from that point on, since it'd be easier to have a romance element baked into the relationship-building process from the start than to slap it on after the rapport has already been maxed out.

Personally, though, I'm using fanfic as an opportunity to get that deeper and more nuanced relationship growth between my Vestige and her wingman (though their partnership is platonic and likely to stay that way). I've long since gotten over the idea that writing my own conversations with Bastian is self-indulgent, and if it is then I don't really care because I'm getting more out of their story than the game would ever just give me. It means I get to pretend he doesn't say the same inane things every time we go near a city or I pick a flower, and I can even imagine him learning to be less judgmental about her stealing habits because he values their partnership so much. (It also means I get to write some really fun scenes and tailor things to my Vestige the way MMO writing could never do.)

Obviously "well I'm gonna write my own companion dialogue with blackjack and hookers" isn't a first choice for everybody, but I feel like in-game interactions are always going to be less fulfilling than what we could imagine for ourselves and our characters, so headcanon isn't a bad way to go to fill in the gaps.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if ZOS is treating the companion system as the kind of work-in-progress where each new set of companions is more fleshed-out and dynamic than the last (which is already something they're touting about Ember and Isobel) but the older ones aren't necessarily updated to bring them up to current spec

I've probably said it before but this a fear of mine. It seems pretty poor to bring out companion characters with interesting back stories and personalities that net them fans only to completely drop them to sell the next expansion. If they can go back and change Lyranth's lines after Deadlands for the base game, adding a few more lines to the Blackwood companions should be easy enough.