Yoshi-P Addresses Player Feedback On How The Scions Were Handled In Dawntrail

When it comes to the story in Final Fantasy XIV’s Dawntrail expansion, players have thoughts. It definitely wasn’t for everyone, with players complaining that it felt like one long sidequest or griping about the treatment of the Scions in the story. Of course, when it comes to the Scions, not everyone agrees on what the treatment of them should have been. Some want more, others want less. Either way, when they’re in the story, they don’t want them sidelined – which is how this expansion felt to some players.

While I can personally think of a few Scions that didn’t get as much love as I would have liked, I felt that it was more or less in line with what we were promised, a summer vacation of sorts. You go to a destination and everyone does what they’d like to do while meeting up every once in a while. While you’re there, you make some new friends. Whether said friends will remain so later is a question for another time.

Still, it’s easy to see where players would want more (or less) of the characters who have been with us from the start.

According to Yoshi-P, who spoke with PC Gamer at Gamescom, the developers were experimenting a bit with Dawntrail. They “wanted to showcase all the Scions” while highlighting new characters as well. Yes, they wanted to see how players would respond. The assumptions were that players would want the Scions to just go or that they would want them back. As it turns out – expectedly – it was both.

What lesson the team did come away with was that players don’t want the devs to be “half-hearted” with the Scions. In the future, players can likely expect them to be used in more purposeful ways. Yoshi-P does note that not having certain Scions in an expansion could get a negative reaction, but he also goes on to add that just because they’re not in one, that doesn’t mean they won’t be back. From this, PC Gamer notes that the plan seems to be rotating the MMORPG’s core characters depending on the story.