Stuffed Fridge

[Balipu]

Are they? I mean they kick butt sure when given the chance but they never seem to really 'outclass' us by a significant degree.

As far as having scions 'for' specific city states I don't think that really matters anymore now that the focus it beyond the initial three city states and now into other lands. In ARR it made sense, in HW and beyond we don't really 'need' a scion assigned to each region anymore story wise.

I'm also not sure I'd say Y'shola is a 'main' character on the same level as the twins, they especially Alph seem more important than Y'shtola to me. She seems more on the level of Thancred ad Popalymo before he died, maybe slightly above them but not eclipsing them. The only thing that really stood out over the others was she was the first one to come back in HW, but still Alph was high above her in importance.

Alph is his own level currently. But still Y'shtola enjoys the most screentime overall and the most involvment with other storylines (Warring Triads, Alexander...etc) followed closely by Thancred. Alisaie is catching up, but only post HW.

[Alleo]

I partly agree with the OP. I am normally quite fine if people get taken out of the story through injuries instead of just outright killing them. The sadness is still there, the character not available for a time and depending on the situation the character itself or others around them can grow. But Ysthola (and in that way Thancred too) just got hurt way too often. And seemingly nothing much changed for her at all.

She is directly struck down by Zenos who normally one hit kills people with his swords. Yet she suffered no consequences for this action. Then we have her eyes that seemingly kill her slowly because she is using aether to see (and this patch shows that she sees totally fine too) but as long as plot does not demand for it to be important its also of no consequence and depending on how they want to go with her we might even find a solution to her problem.

Thancred got taken out twice now too but at least he has suffered from the first one quite a lot. Not being able to use magic or teleport truly hinders him and makes him weaker. The situation with Minfilia and probably his loss of magic also changed his character a bit. Ysthola has none of that imo. Yes she is snarky like Matoya, especially in this patch but imo that is not something that creates a good well written character. At the same time she has so much knowledge, then the power to take down enemies like Magnai, no restriction that truly hinders her right now so seemingly she just might be too powerful for the plot and thus gets taken out a lot. But if such a character only exist for plot points and maybe even a bit it of fanservice then I do wonder why she should stay in the game at all. So SE either kill her off or just finally give her a role in this game and create a deeper character for her that develops through the game. Much more interesting characters got killed for less.

[Bright-Flower]

I partly agree with the OP. I am normally quite fine if people get taken out of the story through injuries instead of just outright killing them. The sadness is still there, the character not available for a time and depending on the situation the character itself or others around them can grow. But Ysthola (and in that way Thancred too) just got hurt way too often. And seemingly nothing much changed for her at all.

She is directly struck down by Zenos who normally one hit kills people with his swords. Yet she suffered no consequences for this action. Then we have her eyes that seemingly kill her slowly because she is using aether to see (and this patch shows that she sees totally fine too) but as long as plot does not demand for it to be important its also of no consequence and depending on how they want to go with her we might even find a solution to her problem.

Thancred got taken out twice now too but at least he has suffered from the first one quite a lot. Not being able to use magic or teleport truly hinders him and makes him weaker. The situation with Minfilia and probably his loss of magic also changed his character a bit. Ysthola has none of that imo. Yes she is snarky like Matoya, especially in this patch but imo that is not something that creates a good well written character. At the same time she has so much knowledge, then the power to take down enemies like Magnai, no restriction that truly hinders her right now so seemingly she just might be too powerful for the plot and thus gets taken out a lot. But if such a character only exist for plot points and maybe even a bit it of fanservice then I do wonder why she should stay in the game at all. So SE either kill her off or just finally give her a role in this game and create a deeper character for her that develops through the game. Much more interesting characters got killed for less.

Nothing has come of the eyes yet I'll admit, though it could in the future.

As for Zenos, she's hardly the only one. The WOL lost to Zenos twice and suffered no consequences for it. Even giving away the fact that we came to Doma had no negative consequences. Grynwaht attacking us in the Steppe only helped us to pull the Xaela tribes together to use against them. I guess Wilfred died but even the resistance overall didn't suffer any meaningful setbacks. Lip service was paid to the 'devesting defeat' at the Reach but the Resistance was still able to hold it with only one named character gone, and Y'shtola was at least out of commission longer than the WOL was. Zenos' tendency to get bored and walk away kind of kills consequences when he's involved a lot of the time.

[Alleo]

Nothing has come of the eyes yet I'll admit, though it could in the future.

As for Zenos, she's hardly the only one. The WOL lost to Zenos twice and suffered no consequences for it. Even giving away the fact that we came to Doma had no negative consequences. Grynwaht attacking us in the Steppe only helped us to pull the Xaela tribes together to use against them. I guess Wilfred died but even the resistance overall didn't suffer any meaningful setbacks. Lip service was paid to the 'devesting defeat' at the Reach but the Resistance was still able to hold it with only one named character gone, and Y'shtola was at least out of commission longer than the WOL was. Zenos' tendency to get bored and walk away kind of kills consequences when he's involved a lot of the time.

Yes and it will probably be a plot in the future, my problem is that it should be of consequence even now. The only one that truly suffers from that spell she used is Thancred. As the instance showed she can see perfectly fine too. At least let her view be much more restricted or anything like that. Because the loss of her life somewhere in the future is honestly not that much of a punishment if everything else stays the same.

The WoL got hit by Zenos but we were not bleeding from the attack and depending on how he hit us it might have not been much because he might have still wanted us as potential rivals. Ysthola was point black hit by a hard sword strike where he even used both hands to deliver it and we even see her bleeding out of the mouth. Yet somehow she did not bleed to death until we got there and has no lasting effect too. (As far as we know)

[Bright-Flower]

Yes and it will probably be a plot in the future, my problem is that it should be of consequence even now. The only one that truly suffers from that spell she used is Thancred. As the instance showed she can see perfectly fine too. At least let her view be much more restricted or anything like that. Because the loss of her life somewhere in the future is honestly not that much of a punishment if everything else stays the same.

The WoL got hit by Zenos but we were not bleeding from the attack and depending on how he hit us it might have not been much because he might have still wanted us as potential rivals. Ysthola was point black hit by a hard sword strike where he even used both hands to deliver it and we even see her bleeding out of the mouth. Yet somehow she did not bleed to death until we got there and has no lasting effect too. (As far as we know)

She was wounded enough to be put out of commission and was out of it longer than we were and she was immediately tended to by Krile. I don't have a problem with her just being injured to put her on a bus there instead of dying or something. Zenos is powerful but it's not like being hit by his sword is an instant 100% death.

As for the spell, there were only two people involved. Thancred suffered immediately repurcussions and y'shtola will likely suffer then down the road. I'm not really bothered by her blindness being something they're keeping on the back burner before using it catches up to her. It's something that will harm her eventually but not neccisarily right away.

[Alleo]

She was wounded enough to be put out of commission and was out of it longer than we were and she was immediately tended to by Krile. I don't have a problem with her just being injured to put her on a bus there instead of dying or something. Zenos is powerful but it's not like being hit by his sword is an instant 100% death.

As for the spell, there were only two people involved. Thancred suffered immediately repurcussions and y'shtola will likely suffer then down the road. I'm not really bothered by her blindness being something they're keeping on the back burner before using it catches up to her. It's something that will harm her eventually but not neccisarily right away.

Thankfully they did let her stay in bed for a longer time otherwise that would have been even worse. Its just a bit annoying to see the plot armor that much with certain people while others die easily. Meffrid at the same time also just got hit with a sword but instantly died. Every Garlean soldier that Zenos hit with his sword died from that one hit (and that with heavy armor on). Ysthola gets a direct hit, where he even uses strenght to break through her shield, thus he should have quite the power behind that slash. If this was any other NPC they would be death. If this was a 18+ game they would have probably be cut open. It was a hit strong enough to break her barrier. She also was not wearing any strong armor. For me its just too obvious that she somehow survives it because of her being part of other games and the post/fan girl of the game.

Also with the spell: Yes only two were involved and one suffered great throwbacks from which he suffers from the start while she can still see quite fine and maybe somewhere in the future this might hurt her. Would have been nice to have her not be able to do her job that good anymore. Maybe just have her be able to see in black and white or only distorted. Or maybe she can only use the aether for a certain amount of time per day thus have her in situations where she is limited to fight. Just something that makes it feel like something has happened to her at all.

And on top of that instead of building her character to more than just snarky, they have taken her out again.

[KageTokage]

I'm curious as to whether or not we're going to have personally do something to bring them back (Perhaps this ties into the last SB MSQ dungeon somehow?), or if whoever spirited them away is just going to give them back once they've told/shown them what they needed to see or rather kept them out of commission long enough to prevent history from repeating its course.

The fact that Thancred then Urianger and Y'shtola got KO'd right when they were trying to entertain certain ideas seemed a little too convenient.

[Roda]

I really miss doing things in the main story with the scions. They were the most likeable characters in ARR, but ever since HW they've been knocked out, MIA, or just off doing their own chores. We'd get occasional visits from them when our paths cross, but other than that it's "hey, how've you been?" "oh no there's a problem" "welp we solved the problem, BYEE!!" or "Oops the problem got worse, bleh X_X"
I dont' know about anyone else, but ARR got me really attached to my starting citystate's scion. They feel like a representative of my character for the world of the npcs (kind of like a racial leader for other games). I honestly feel really bad for folks who started in Gridania now that they have no scion representation. :T

And I seriously agree with the desire to stop traveling with children. My FC has a particular sigh every time the story characters allow Alphinaud to do anything other than going to his room and thinking about what he's done after the whole debacle in ARR... I'd much rather travel with my character's peers than super-special-protagonist-children who every actual responsible adult takes commands from because they're loaded. I honestly wouldn't mind the twins being written out of the story permanently, but I'd settle for them switching bus/fridge-duty with the scions at this point. The ending of under the moonlight was a good start imo. A shame they spoiled it with this patch's decisions for the scions.

[LineageRazor]

The deal with Y'shtola's eyes is somewhat irritating. It's reminiscent of the Incurable Cough of Death trope as described by TVTropes - it's a serious problem, but has little or no affect on the character until the plot decides some drama is in order.

Y'shtola's blindness had some potential to flesh out Y'shtola's character a bit. How does she feel about being blind? But, like many things when it comes to Y'shtola, the potential is squandered because she has such a stony grip on her emotions. As far as we can tell, it's just, "I'm blind. Oh, well!"

It's one of the reasons why I find Y'shtola to be a thoroughly boring character. Characters are more interesting when they REACT, when you know how they feel, when you know what their motivations are. Y'shtola has no cracks at all in her composure, ever. She's a bland collection of heroic tropes. She'll fight the good fight, she'll sacrifice herself to save her friends and others - but we don't really know WHY, except that she's a good person. Actually, we don't even really know if she's a good person. All this heroism could be just her way of amusing herself.

[ObsidianFire]

There's a few ways Y'shtola's blindness can get the better of her. But one of the things we do know about her is that she is incredibly suborn once she makes up her mind. I can see her ignoring her own problems until it majorly impacts her further down the line.

Thancred doesn't have that issue as much because he's already had to deal with it back in 2.0 when he got possessed by Lahabrea. He knows he has to pay attention to his limitations and not ignore how they impact him. Y'shtola's never had to learn that yet.