Request for Eternally Bonded partner to be included in cutscenes

My partner and I always play through story content together (msq, raids, seasonal content etc.). We go through the overworld in tandem, ride pillion between destinations, and sync up in front of an NPC when we're advancing a storyline.

Because of this it can feel like cutscenes happen in a bubble where my partner doesn't exist. It would be wonderful if they could be added to some cutscenes unobtrusively, if only as a background NPC, so long as they feel present in the moment.

I picture the following criteria should be met:
- you are Eternally Bonded
- you are the only two members in a party together.
- you are in the same zone and instance.

This would not apply to cutscenes involving private or intimate conversations between the WoL and another NPC.

The Eternally Bonded PC's model would be loaded into the cutscene in a reserved space in group shots; otherwise the space is left empty.

They would wordlessly converse with other NPCs, perform emotes much like our WoL does in cutscenes, nod encouragingly to us or /rally, or whatever else the developers feel appropriate for that moment.

Maybe on rare occasions such as when all the scions are taking turns attacking a major opponent, the PC could join in with a generic action related to their current class.

If this were implemented it would help make story content feel more seamless with the social nature of the game.

The idea is cool and I'd even extend it to people in the whole party in general, but I can't realistically see this happening. They can't even get hats to work on Viera or Hrothgar.

SWTOR was doing this with their cutscenes years ago... Not sure why this would be an issue with a number 1 game like FFXIV... I had a character I just played while levelling with my brother and I agree that this is cool and should be done.

At this point, you probably have a better chance to get this by asking modders to do it.

I’d like them to extend this to ceremonies for NPC’s

I mean go look at the average blue sky RP’er and more of them than boy they are “married” to an NPC

Hell my OC here Andreas is married to deryk

I always thought it made more sense than marrying another player

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Originally Posted by Honalee

SWTOR was doing this with their cutscenes years ago... Not sure why this would be an issue with a number 1 game like FFXIV... I had a character I just played while levelling with my brother and I agree that this is cool and should be done.

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I think I remember Guild Wars 2 doing the same, and more - actually involving other party members in the solo fight instances too, sometimes as an onlooker, sometimes as part of the action.
Its sad that you can't join a friend on their quests the same way. IMHO, cutscenes and solo instances should work with up to 3 party members.

The cutscenes do happen in a bubble, the story content does not take the other players into account at all. If other players are to be present in cutscenes there should be no requisite as big as eternally bonding for them to be present.

But sadly I doubt we will ever see other players in cutscenes except for preatorium.

There's a big difference between having 1 empty space reserved for another PC verses having 7 empty spaces. I'm thinking in particular of cinematic staging, lighting concerns and so on. Having all party members in a cutscene would be nice but is very ambitious, which is why I've suggested scoping out down to a much more limited version with clear criteria. To start with, at least.

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Originally Posted by St0rmy

The idea is cool and I'd even extend it to people in the whole party in general, but I can't realistically see this happening. They can't even get hats to work on Viera or Hrothgar.

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Please just imagine wearing then

Small indie company

I think they would have to do two versions of every cut scene then. Like NPCs need to be placed a bit differently to make space for the second PC, maybe camera angles need to be adjustet when two PC are there, NPC or PC need to move differently to make sure they don't run into each other, should NPCs acknowledge that another PC is there so that they look at them too or do they just ignore them as like they don't really exist? I guess that's not really worth the work that would need to go into that request.

It sounds interesting, and I mean this in the nicest way. Thats a coding, and very time consuming nightmare in order to make every model. PLus in the story i believe our characters are their own MC. Adding another person when its suppose to be your own story kind of sounds eh. Once again i don't want to sound rude but with my 1 year of coding that sounds liek a nightmare. Especially making the files for each cutscene, or if they do it make it so it only shows up after ARR into HW.

I have to agree with the majority here, it would be a nice little touch but it doesn't work in the mechanics of the story, the player character is the WoL singular and even if they did find a way to bend the story mechanics to make it work, they'd then have to make two of every cutscene and that's just never going to happen.

Too much dev time for something that would be seen by 0.001% of the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

I picture the following criteria should be met:
- you are Eternally Bonded
- you are the only two members in a party together.
- you are in the same zone and instance.

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The number of people who play through the MSQ while fulfilling this criteria is astronomically small. I'd rather the dev time was used on literally anything else.

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Originally Posted by Mercury_Grey

It sounds interesting, and I mean this in the nicest way. Thats a coding, and very time consuming nightmare in order to make every model. PLus in the story i believe our characters are their own MC. Adding another person when its suppose to be your own story kind of sounds eh. Once again i don't want to sound rude but with my 1 year of coding that sounds liek a nightmare. Especially making the files for each cutscene, or if they do it make it so it only shows up after ARR into HW.

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The character models pre-exist, there's no additional coding involved in making them.

I don't know what tools the developers use for creating cutscenes but I doubt it's programmatic. So while there's undoubtedly development work involved, it's probably not a matter of coding beyond initial support of the feature.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

I have to agree with the majority here, it would be a nice little touch but it doesn't work in the mechanics of the story, the player character is the WoL singular and even if they did find a way to bend the story mechanics to make it work, they'd then have to make two of every cutscene and that's just never going to happen.

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I'm not so worried about that personally. That incongruity is already present in the game and is overlooked by literally everyone. For example, when other players' WoLs are teleported in at the start of a trial, in each players' experience they're the one who was there originally.

Bumping this to mention another thread where people express they'd like party members to join in quests and duty instances. It's a great idea. It's like to include that in this request too :)

I imagine from a technical perspective it could be possible. They would first have to create the framework do detect if the couple is grouped together to fulfill the required conditions. Then in a given cutscene, add the EB partner, even if he/she is just standing there, maybe add some navigation nodes to have him/her walk around. If the player is solo or in a non-EB group, these extra scripts/nodes will do nothing. I imagine the initial framework might not be too difficult to implement, it would be fairly easy to add the EB partner to any individual cutscene. But the game has an enormous amount of cutscenes, probably in the thousands. A fairly simple addition to a cutscene multiplied by thousands of cutscenes would mean a massive amount of work (Potentially several thousand man-hours). And let's be honest, the percentage of people who would actually make use of this and benefit from it would be tiny. Those man-hours would be far better spent on something that benefits everyone, like bringing old-world areas up to modern standards of graphical fidelity.

From a technical perspective, this idea makes sense, but from a cost/benefit perspective, absolutely not.

I could see it being feasible for future content going forward, where marginal added work when inserting the EB partner in a newly created cutscene would be very small as opposed to going back and retroactively updating thousands of old cutscenes. But then doing so could be perceived as a half-assed job, and risk creating the expectation that the old cutscenes should be converted, which would take a huge amount of work that could be better spent elsewhere.

Who keeps bumping these terminally online threads from last decade