Evercold MSQ Party

[Aonns]

In the last, the dev team noted player-wide dissatisfaction with how the Scions were shoehorned into the plot. It was originally done because they didn't want to upset players who were fans of say Alisae but she didn't appear in the expansion. After the backlash, they floated the idea of shelving some cast members so the game's plot wouldn't suffer the foced inclusion.

With that in mind, who do you want to be your traveling companions for Evercold? Let's go with your top four.

My personal line up likely won't happen. Of the main Scions, I want Urianger and Estinien. Urianger in particular is one of my favorite characters in the game and I found the Estinien drop kick hilarious in the trailer.

My second two are less likely: Feo Ul and Erenville. We likely won't see Erenville for a while, if ever again. But I love his voice and I think DT didn't treat him well at the end so I want to give him some more time. And Feo Ul fights Uriamger for my favorite character. They are delightful! Here we are, about to go on a journey to a shard unseen and she refuses to be left behind again by her heartless sapling.

[Wasselin]

I mean, look at Dawntrail. They essentially sidelined Thancred, Urianger, and G'raha Tia for the vast majority of the main plot.

They need to work on keeping the active traveling party to four people. It keeps the focus tight, matches a standard light party, and stops the story from feeling too crowded. In theater, you generally want to only have characters on the stage that are actively contributing to moving something forward. Instead of locking in one static group for an entire expansion, they need to rotate characters in and out as the journey moves along.

We’d get to see different pairings and actually deepen the relationships between Scions who don’t usually get a lot of one-on-one screen time together.

[Jeeqbit]

None of them. But they'll probably make them come with us anyway, given they were in the trailer.

[RagAndBoneLady]

Just Estinien and Alphy hopefully...

I'm hoping for new companions from The Fourth that aren't blathering academics.

I think one of the Cat-dwarves, a Duskwight(Svartalfheim), a Roegadyn(Jotunheim) and an AuRa(Muspelheim... If two Roe is too much for the devs...) would make a nice refresher rotation!

Having the Catfolk covers the appeal to Miqo'te and Lala without overusing them.

[Maltothoris]

I did a little tally of duty supports from a while ago and though not the best indicator.

• Alphinaud 34 duties 31 dungeons, 3 trials
• Alisaie 32 duties 28 dungeons, 4 trials
• Y'shtola 25 duties 22 dungeons, 3 trials
• G'raha Tia 20 duties, 17 dungeons, 3 trials
• Thancred 18 duties 16 dungeons, 2 trials
• Urianger 16 duties 14 dungeons, 2 trials
• Estinien 13 duties 11 dungeons, 2 trials
• Krile 13 duties 10 dungeons, 3 trials

Even then you can't be too sure on what they'll do. Take Thancred and Urianger for example in DT. First right here, they appear on the key art poster for it.


Next, on the DT website, they are labeled as key characters.



Following that you have these descriptions





And ultimately at the every end, these two were the two scions you could of easily scrapped from the story and it wouldn't of made a difference. (You could make an argument for Thancred but Urianger had nothing going on for him in this story.) Heck, they had to make these two the most prominent for patch 7.5 despite them not appearing for the patch artwork there.

So it's just at the whims of the writers here.

[Valence]

The day they'll realize that keeping the Scions sucking all the air and leaving crumbs for secondary new characters is literally part of their formulaic design that makes everything feel stale over time...

[StriderShinryu]

The day they'll realize that keeping the Scions sucking all the air and leaving crumbs for secondary new characters is literally part of their formulaic design that makes everything feel stale over time...

To be fair, they've basically commented on this before but had to acknowledge that to a large portion of the player base The Scions are basically The Game. They would riot if their husbando or waifu wasn't around in some way or form (I mean, just look at the uproar over Graha's voice actor maybe having been changed in a single patch). It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

For the record, though, I definitely agree that I want to see less Scion involvement and not more. If I had my pick of returning characters coming back to take a bigger part of the story I'd jettison the regular Scions and bring back Fordola and Arenvald (and yes make more room for new characters).

[Turtledeluxe]

The day they'll realize that keeping the Scions sucking all the air and leaving crumbs for secondary new characters is literally part of their formulaic design that makes everything feel stale over time...

Huh? When did this happen in DT? If anything Scions sucking up air may have done some good. I liked Iceheart. I did not need her to talk for 3000 lines. In fact I would argue this never happened in Heavensward either. Its 100000% carried by xpac characters.

[Jeeqbit]

We have some clear evidence that the Evercold portal we opened was used by multiple people (Krile's parents, and the many lalafells that went to the Ninth). So sadly that means there's a way for us to take them along. All they have to do though is write it in a way that only we can go and then we can handle it ourselves and meet a new team.

[Brynne]

I love the Scions and don't necessarily want them benched but I'd like them to be plot-relevant when they appear, and more importantly, in-character.

That said, if I had to pick four, mine would be:
- G'raha (obviously)
- Estinien
- Thancred
- Urianger

I don't think this group would happen (I mean, it's already confirmed we'll be with Alphinaud at some point per the trailer), but those would be my picks. Regardless, I'd rather they pick completely different characters if they're more relevant to the plot and/or going to get character development from it.