Retainer Companions

[Toodles]

Path Companions are neat but I just envisioned something far greater right now than even simple Retainer Companions.

Implement story characters who are intended to become part of our personal entourage akin to a traditional single-player FF.

This could be the current Scions however character death or displacement couldn't occur if they were meant to stick with us to the bitter end, so I think it'd be better if we got new NPC's to fight alongside us as Companions.

More personality & uniqueness from your basic NPC's & who actually participate in the plot to an extent.

They'd act akin to how an Optional Recruit like Vincent or Yuffie did in FF7, chiming in when brought along but not story-imperative.

Add in that guy's FFXII Gambit Suggestion & we're golden!

I love that idea, let us gambit AI controlled Companions *drool*.

[WellFooled]

More personality & uniqueness from your basic NPC's & who actually participate in the plot to an extent.

They'd act akin to how an Optional Recruit like Vincent or Yuffie did in FF7, chiming in when brought along but not story-imperative.

To make this work with the varying different retainer personalities they would have to write unique dialog for each of those personalities, multiplied by how many times you'd like the retainer to speak up. That's adds up to a lot of work very quickly. Our playable characters don't even get that kind of attention. I would rather all that effort be spent giving our characters more dialog options in quests instead.

I'm all for retainer companions, or something along those lines, but I think including them in the main story is getting our priorities mixed up.

[Felis]

To make this work with the varying different retainer personalities they would have to write unique dialog for each of those personalities, multiplied by how many times you'd like the retainer to speak up. That's adds up to a lot of work very quickly. Our playable characters don't even get that kind of attention. I would rather all that effort be spent giving our characters more dialog options in quests instead.

They already did something like this with the path companions. Each race and gender had their own personality and dialogue.

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...323fd5710d7f4d

Example:

Miqo’te Female
A lady who knows what she likes, and likes a little bit of everything. Don’t be fooled by her coquettish manner and all-too-apparent charms; in her breast beats the fiery heart of a warrior. Not to worry, though, she’ll be gentle—assuming that’s what you like.

[Toodles]

They already did something like this with the path companions. Each race and gender had their own personality and dialogue.

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...323fd5710d7f4d

Example:

Precisely... it's nothing new, and not like a little dialogue here or there really cuts development time back so severely.....

[WellFooled]

L

They already did something like this with the path companions. Each race and gender had their own personality and dialogue.

Something similar to path companions would be very cool and I'm sad that I missed playing ffxiv back when it was a feature. But I'm not trying to say it's too much work or can't be done, but rather that our own characters should get that extra dialog work if anything is.

There are very few instances in the game where we're given any dialog and even in those cases sometimes the characters around us give us the same responses no matter what we say. If dozens of new lines of text are going to be written for, and in response to, a character I would rather that character be us.

We designed both our own characters and our retainers, but the retainers are just extras in a movie, our characters are the star.

[Fyrebrand]

10/10 Awesome Idea. Let's make it happen, Squeenix!!

Of course, first they have to fix the problem of companion/mount incompatibility. Unless I can ride on my companions piggy-back style..??

OMG imagine if you can do dungeons with your companions. Pretty much you, your 2 retainers and your chocobo. That would be amazing.

Uh... there is no way that would work. An AI NPC could not possibly know how to deal with complex boss mechanics. Even something as simple as avoiding AoEs would be pretty messy.

Implement story characters who are intended to become part of our personal entourage akin to a traditional single-player FF.

Cool idea, but it does not make much sense to see 30 Minfillias running around the same area. At least Retainers are player-created and named, so they're not all going to be the same.