Can we have an honest conversation about the Scions? Dawn Trail

[Merrigan]

Unpopular opinion on the forum: I have no desire to see them go, and I'm absolutely delighted that they're coming back with us. I have no desire for a new cast, and I would even find it rather inconsistent if our character agreed to leave behind friends who have been with them for a while now.

[Darkstride]

I would have been fine moving on from the Scions being around 24/7, and instead involving them in secondary content like Role Quests or something.

[ReynTime]

I think it's more "stop calling us to deal with your problems now" as opposed to "let's stop hanging out". Like people who still hang out after their company closes.

And they go right back to dealing with another country's problems. Nothing changed.

[Equitable_Remedy]

It's just like how shows always get much better when the original cast gets replaced, right?

[HappyHubris]

Unpopular opinion on the forum: I have no desire to see them go, and I'm absolutely delighted that they're coming back with us. I have no desire for a new cast, and I would even find it rather inconsistent if our character agreed to leave behind friends who have been with them for a while now.

We're not leaving them behind to mope and wait for our attention. EW literally ended with each character articulating what they would like to return to on their own.

[Merrigan]

We're not leaving them behind to mope and wait for our attention. EW literally ended with each character articulating what they would like to return to on their own.

And indeed I think there's a bit of a writing problem here - in particular, I think the intermediate quests should have been done without them. To give them a break which, even though I wouldn't necessarily have been happy with it, seems to have been requested by some players. There would also have been the intermediate solution of letting them leave for an expansion (DT?) in order to respect these "last words".

But in itself, the fact that they're back in the limelight isn't too bad: the dissolution of the Scions is above all a way of acting independently of the city-states, and of affirming that from now on, the city-states will have to acquire the means to act on their own. Not that they're all going to bury themselves in their own holes. That's what I understood when they talked about "going back to their own business".

[Raikai]

I thought we were done with them. Here is the thing, one of the reasons I'm less excited about dawntrail is because I was seriously under the impression that they were going to phase out the scions and introduce a new cast. It was the perfect opportunity to do so. For example, the scions disband and go about their desires and they can even make the occasional cameo.

Like, is it just me or wouldn't the story be much more exciting if we took the trip to the new world with just Erenville and that hrothgal and the trailers showed mysterious new characters we will meet along the way? That would be so much better...

There is nothing remarkable about the scions... I don't hate them, but TBH they are just not characters that I couldn't live without. A bunch of them have the personality of a wet mop and are all just about doing good... and yeah, cuz being good is good and what not.

Ugh, I don't know if SE believes this cast is more marketable than it actually is.. I feel like at least in my social circles, the scions are just people players put up with to play the game, they don't look forward to seeing what they're up to next. I could also be wrong, but idk, maybe a discussion forms around this. I am firmly in the new cast territory. Seeing the scions be a major part in Dawn Trail made me roll my eyes.

This just doesn't feel like a new beginning. And a lot of it is because of them.

I just see the scions as a parallel to a long standing tv series' cast - successful shows go around with the same cast for years (with occasional additions or subtractions) and nobody complains. Thing is that they need to keep character arcs evolving with time, and I think XIV is only partially successful in that,

[Averax]

Yeah i was also kind of hoping we'd start meeting new people. Like occasional Cameos from the original cast would be fine, but there's a certain point past which characters have finished their development, and the scions have long since done this. Now they're just around and (specifically Y'shtola) exist as exposition machines.

Like it's good we get more of a focus on Krile because she hasn't really done a lot up to this point. She's been around, but not much of a player in the story. Wish we had more though, could even be folks from the scion B team

[Katish]

It's just like how shows always get much better when the original cast gets replaced, right?

Depends on the longevity of the show, there are cases where the cast needs to be replaced or it gets stale because people have no idea what to do with the characters; I think this is one of those scenarios. But still I wouldn't use that logic though, why? Because shows are made to be binged, so you want to retain the original cast to some degree as usually characters are one of the reasons to continue watching the show. I would treat this more like a video game (bc it is) with returning characters in the next game (as each expansion is basically a new story). It's fine at first, but could you imagine playing a video game with the same cast for 6 games? Sounds excessive. There's a reason why RPGs switch the cast usually in the next install of the game, and that's because when another topic or another exploration is introduced, how could the previous characters possibly relate especially if its a whole new setting, you can get away with some of them but otherwise if you try and fit the entire cast it feels really forced.

[DPZ2]

Because shows are made to be binged, so you want to retain the original cast to some degree as usually characters are one of the reasons to continue watching the show

This is definitely a 21st century take on television shows. Broadcast television didn't create shows to be binge watched before streaming media, Nostalgic cable TV stations and DVDs of older shows made mass profits from a new generation watching older shows.

Most long-running broadcast television shows maintained their original cast because if too many cast members changed, people lost interest. If the original cast members of Friends or Seinfeld (as examples) had suddenly disappeared, the shows would have been a disaster. (Hmmmm. That might explain why the Friends spinoff, Joey, only lasted two seasons.)

MMORPGs are not "different games" in the sense of The Witcher and The Witcher 3. They are continuations of a single long-running game with multiple episodes and a gameplay and feel that has been fairly stable throughout the years.