Hello everyone!

I am personally a moderate fan of the current companion system. It has its pluses, it has some flaws, but overall I think it's endearing and I enjoy most of them as characters, their quests and their personality. But I also feel that updates to companions have been unfortunately mostly limited to just adding more companions rather than improving on how we interact those present. I feel like after doing their quest they are left to a set-and-forget kind of state. I would personally be in favor of the next updates focusing on improving some base features from companions over adding new ones so that when new ones get added, we can get more out of them as well. Here's a few thoughts I had of things that I could enjoy seeing being added to them.


Battle strategy management:
Among the combat updates I'd like to see done with them, I'd like to have access to a menu that lets me give them a set of behaviors to follow in combat, which might help with their awkward running and scattering or AoE positioning. I am thinking orders like "stand opposite side to me", "stand your position", "follow my movements", "prioritize marked location", "Focus weaker/stronger targets" etc. This could be something in the companion menu when talking to them with a list of settings to place, you then go into battle and they would behave according to what you asked them.


Add 2 more ultimates per companion:
While companions are meant to be role customizable, I think for that purpose each companion should come with a set of 3 ultimates, one per role, instead of the current format where each only get 1 and its only for damage purposes. This is mostly to round out their role focus.


Actually release legendary companion equipment into the world:
I find it odd that legendary companion equipment only exists so far through events or gifts, and only as rings. I would prefer to be able to find legendary companion gear naturally through adventuring. And admitedly, the true reason I would want this is honestly because I just like round values. Right now traits and stats for purple gear caps at unclean values like trait% of 1.2%, 1.7%, 2.7% instead of nice 1.5%, 2% or 3% while armor and weapons have stat values of 900/1900/2900 instead of 1000/2000/3000. I am particular about being a number neat freak.


Companion Duo adventuring:
I think I'm not alone in wanting to be able to summon 2 companions at the same time, but in my mind I think it shouldn't just be an update that allows this universally and nothing more. I think this would be a great opportunity to add this feature as a quest reward to add some more story and interactions between our companions. Maybe not have every possible duo combination possible immediately, but something like interacting with Ember, her hearing you met this mercenary from Necrom and being curious to meet them, which would start a quest whereas you would go on an adventure with Ember and invite Sharp-As-Night along, have them banter as you quest and then through earning each other's trust (despite their different opinions on fishing) you could then uniquely summon the 2 together when adventuring. I imagine Azandar could be curious about Zerith-Var and his past being a scholar type, wanting to know if he had seen anything of particular interest in his era but maybe lacking a bit of consideration when talking about such subjects by being too focused on academics.


Companion heirloom quest (companion mythics):
Each companion could have a unique quest that starts a hunt for an antique jewellry piece item, either from family connection, treasure hunting, lost and reclaim, etc. This would be to offer a certain connection and significance to the item for the companion with a bit of fun engagement to obtain. This mythic would be a jewellry mostly so it doesn't force a role specific equipment piece onto a companion, would have the unique ability to choose which trait you want on it with the value of a legendary equipment and offer a unique bonus to the companion in combat.


Companion Duels:
This one is mostly a for fun kind of idea but it could be interesting to have the option, after much adventuring, that you may choose to spar with your companion and their strength would scale to their level, the skill lines they have developped and the equipped type of weapon/armor weight. I do not think of it as a way to earn rewards and such but just a feature that would be cool to have and interact with at our own leisure (maybe an alternative to dueling tasks as opposed to dueling players for upcoming tamriel tomes).