The Next Expansion cycle needs 2 things. 1) A Break from the Scions and 2)Time Skip

[Shinku_Tachi]

I'm on board with another expansion being an all new adventure within another one of the reflections or even some far away planet in the Source's universe.

I'd rather Meracydia be put off for an expansion or two. I'm not in a hurry to get to it.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

I'm the opposite. The Warrior of Light is the protagonist. The Scions are our party members and friends. We just saw what happens when they get sidelined for an entire expansion and somebody else gets the focus. Hell, we saw what happens when we get sidelined and it's not enjoyable.

This is a horrible take. The Scions were sidelined SPECIFICALLY because they didn't know what to do with them and included them "just because we thought people wanted them to be there and would be mad if they weren't."
That's not a party, that's not friends. That led to manufactured plot contrivances being introduced to facilitate including characters who've mostly; save for a few exceptions, had complete character arcs and have no more room for substantial personal growth.

Hiroi tried to give them new growth and development in 6.1 and the backlash was so intense towards the few things he tried that he was literally told he couldn't explore their characters like that again. Ever since then they've been cardboard cut-outs of themselves that exist as stereotypes rather than characters.

I have not done 7.3 yet, but as far as the Scions go, they either need to quit being afraid to mess with them a bit or drop them like they promised back in 6.1.

What happened to that plot point that her life force is fading quickly and in the EW she just give her aether away to Zero ?

Player misconception. She uses her corporeal aether, aka energy absorbed from the aether you get from eating food, to see. Essentially, she just requires more natural energy than others, but she was never dying or using up her life force. They've answered that question before, she's not dying, she's just more hungry.... and takes naps, as 6.1 showed us with her falling asleep in The Noumenon.

[JMadFour]

I need my Thancred romance and I need it now!

not gonna lie, romance with a npc is just not something I would ever care about. more power to you if you get it though.

Let the Scions lives continue, especially if they have less focus in our future adventures. Let them grow in some kind of way, doesn't even have to be a romance. Show me they have a life outside of us. Let those, "it's been awhile" moments feel like it's actually been awhile.

This I would be totally down with though.

[MikeCake]

Timeskips do not work, and make for extremely poor story-telling, because we already had one between 1.0 and 2.0 and are still picking up the pieces from that.


The only correct execution for that is to overplay the Isekai trope by having the WoL basically "yoinked" into another reflection.

eg.
(That's from Ultima 7 part 2's final CG movie, where the guardian pulls you through the portal to a world he controls and where the system of government and magic is completely upside down from how the previous 4 games work.)

And that's easily done by having a reflection be a de-facto mirror-universe of the source. We've seen some of this with the first (how the 3 city states have "something" in the first where they should be located, plus the entire "shadowbringers" theme) but why not go the entire way and have a reflection that represents a dark "source" where Garlemald was the one subjugated by Ishgard (who has made dragons extinct), Thanaland and the Twelveswood are war zones, and the land of La Noscea just rules the seas so access to other cities by sea is impossible at first. Ala Mhigo and Doma were never taken by the Garleans.

So that would allow the developers to do a couple of interesting things:
- Revamp the three cities maps to be a single map instead of split maps, and give them an "evil" ruler vibe
- Revamp Ishgard and the surrounding Cortheas into an area not devastated by the moon crashing. No more Ice.
- Remove all the random moon debris
- Put some walls up between Thanaland and the Twelveswood.

I'm not saying that is what I want, but It would offer the developers a way to not have to create more landmasses but instead use a reflection with the same near-identical landmasses. It could be one where the Version 1.0 opening cutscene of the keeper of the lake never happening, and the "allagan empire" never coming into existance. Hence the Garleans never have the opportunity to adapt from their tech. Heck if we want to go a step further. No Red Moon at all.

Its been 6 expansions from 1.0, we have picked up the pieces.

If you are talking about plot holes those happened during or after ARR.
There is not much to go from since end of Endwalker, can already see it with Dawntrail trying to do too many things at once and becoming a jargon.
A timeskip would help elevate the story, give it room to breathe while creating more plot points the writers can take time to write instead of cramming it into one single expansion.

[Regis_Paran]

This is a horrible take. The Scions were sidelined SPECIFICALLY because they didn't know what to do with them and included them "just because we thought people wanted them to be there and would be mad if they weren't."
That's not a party, that's not friends. That led to manufactured plot contrivances being introduced to facilitate including characters who've mostly; save for a few exceptions, had complete character arcs and have no more room for substantial personal growth.

Hiroi tried to give them new growth and development in 6.1 and the backlash was so intense towards the few things he tried that he was literally told he couldn't explore their characters like that again. Ever since then they've been cardboard cut-outs of themselves that exist as stereotypes rather than characters.

So by your own admission, the issue is not with the Scions per se, but with the fact that we currently have poor writers.
And looking at characters introduced in DT, those writers are equally incapable of creating new NPCs that have compelling backstories, growth and are actually liked by the players.

So if I have no other choice, I'd rather take cardboard Scions than another Wuk Lamat, thank you very much.

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

I feel like a time skip would be difficult to implement in a persistent online world like this. There's already a bit of suspension of disbelief required with respect to the state of the open world after all the story events that have transpired, which is totally normal for the genre, but a time skip would massively complicate that -- they could split zones based on MSQ progression, but the open world is generally empty enough as it is, so I don't think that'd be a good idea.

A break from the Scions would be fine, but they have to commit to it. Dawntrail flirted with the idea, but didn't really commit (and obviously fumbled in other ways that have been discussed to hell and back). IMO, bring the twins, since the story largely revolves around them, but cut everyone else out for an expansion and give some new characters some real time to grow. GW2 does a pretty good job of this with every expansion: you take some of the old gang to every new locale, but never all of them (maybe everyone shows up for a huge final battle, but most of them aren't relevant to the expansion story), and then you expand the crew throughout.

[Auro_Seldaris]

This is a horrible take. The Scions were sidelined SPECIFICALLY because they didn't know what to do with them and included them "just because we thought people wanted them to be there and would be mad if they weren't."
That's not a party, that's not friends. That led to manufactured plot contrivances being introduced to facilitate including characters who've mostly; save for a few exceptions, had complete character arcs and have no more room for substantial personal growth.

Hiroi tried to give them new growth and development in 6.1 and the backlash was so intense towards the few things he tried that he was literally told he couldn't explore their characters like that again. Ever since then they've been cardboard cut-outs of themselves that exist as stereotypes rather than characters.

I have not done 7.3 yet, but as far as the Scions go, they either need to quit being afraid to mess with them a bit or drop them like they promised back in 6.1.

Let's be real here, they should have died in Endwalker, full stop. With the exception of the twins and maybe G'raha or Estinien. Kinda have to keep the twins around as they're sort of the characters that talk for the player since we're voiceless, plus they still have a lot of growing to do, figuratively and literally. Killing G'raha in EW would have been like,"then why did you save him in ShB, should have just left him a fancy paperweight in the Crystal Tower". Estinien pops in and out and he's not been around enough to ruin yet, though him helping dragons make peace with tragedy would have been a fitting end for him. Thancred should definitely have died for real. Same with Urianger, since he finally got to have some development and made his peace with Moenbryda's parents. Either that or retired to the moon (since Moenbryda literally meant "Moon Bride"). Y'shtola still has the dimension travel stuff but they're not REALLY doing anything with it and she's basically in stasis, so... could have offed her too, sad to say.


The issue here is Yoshida apparently got into a serious disagreement with Ishikawa over them. Apparently from a creative standpoint, she actually thought they should die in Ultima Thule, and he went full producer-brain and told her it would ruin the Trust/Duty Support system, that he needed to keep them around for that, so they had to stay. This is kinda the reason they're in limbo. He forced the issue, despite having no clear plan and most of their character arcs being totally finished.

However, if Hiroi's idea of "character growth and development" is turning Y'shtola into a Magical Girl, then he deserves not to write them ever again. It tells me a lot about Hiroi if all he can do is lean on Anime sterotypes like the Magical Girl (6.1 Y'shtola) and the Shonen Protagonist (Wuk Lamat).

Problem is, if they drop the Scions now, unless we go to another Shard alone, it's going to feel a bit forced as they should naturally have exited in EW, but Yoshida insisted they stay for the Trust system. Which is another problem... their storytelling is now in service to the systems of the game and not the other way around. You can feel it in the moments where the plot twists in pretzel shapes to fit in the next dungeon or trial. The plot now suffers becuase they have to force in a dungeon or a trial at certain points even if it makes little sense, and in turn this makes the Trusts feel strongarmed into the plot and story.

Player misconception. She uses her corporeal aether, aka energy absorbed from the aether you get from eating food, to see. Essentially, she just requires more natural energy than others, but she was never dying or using up her life force. They've answered that question before, she's not dying, she's just more hungry.... and takes naps, as 6.1 showed us with her falling asleep in The Noumenon.

Yes, the whole "She's slowly dying" thing is literally only in the English version, because of a translation error. She basically just "eats" more aether than a normal person does to power her eyes. I do wish they would address that in game at some point just to end this confusion once and for all.

[Kaurhz]

I'm down for it being a completely new adventure

But they really don't know how to make compelling characters anymore, so I feel like it's going to be this weird copy/paste personality with a different skin.

[SkankyRoe]

Every expansion taking place within the same year gets more and more insane.

This hasn't been the case since Stormblood, and as of Dawntrail we have a confirmed in-game timeline of roughly three years between the start of ARR and the WoL arriving in Tuliyollal.

[Jeeqbit]

I am bored of the scions as well. But I think there are reasons for it:

1. We need to only be around them when it's relevant. We should move on from them most of the time like Ash Ketchum did in Pokemon. New cast every region, meeting them again once in a blue moon. It was a great decision for them and it would be good for this game.

2. Update their clothes. Y'shtola is wearing clothes from Shadowbringers. The clothes are hardly even believable because Tataru somehow recreated clothes she hadn't even seen to perfection. Given all the hard work on the graphics update, surely an employee could spare a moment to give Y'shtola a little makeover? Could even re-use existing gear and change it slightly to save precious development cost.

3. They suddenly participate in our cutscenes after being away for ages, and somehow know everything that has transpired down to the last detail, even when they didn't see it and couldn't possibly understand it the way we do. We just have so many allies now that the writing struggles heavily with keeping them all in the loop, and almost just avoids explaining how they know sometimes. Sometimes it would just be easier for them to not be in the loop, or at least, for them to not act like they are on top of all the details and just say "you continue dealing with that Calyx stuff that's over my head".

4. They keep them around in part for duty support, especially for trials. This is rather obvious at this point. But I would like to see them just build up a fresh team of 7 people who can fight with you each expansion. Maybe occasionally, an old scion can be part of that if the story is relevant to them. For example, Krile in this expansion was actually relevant. Arguably, Y'shtola is relevant because she is interested in shards. The rest of them are just along for the sake of it (Alphi and Ali, G'raha).

The main reason I'd want a time skip at all is to see Gulool Ja when he's older. That's it really.