Trust Suggestions

[Mirage]

1. Trust does not impose an experience penalty, but partying with human players (even duo/trio) penalizes EXP. This discourages and punishes players for socializing and making friends. Parties of six or fewer members should not be penalized for EXP. This will balance Trusting and Partying/Duoing/Trioing. Right now, if a real-life friend of mine joins the game, my friend would be punished EXP-wise for partying with me instead of soloing with Trust NPCs.
   
2. The fact that trust NPCs' levels dynamically adjust based on item levels is unbalanced for SMN, whose level 99 staves are more useful than item level staves (except for blood pact macros and Nirvana 119). If I want my trust NPCs to be competent when farming/doing RoE in Adoulin, I have to use an item level staff full-time that wastes my MP. I think Trust NPCs should have their stats based on the item level of equipment when they're called. I have a 117 staff. I'll gladly equip it when summoning my trust NPCs. But please don't penalize me just because my level 99 Bahamut's Staff is better than my level 117 Eminent Staff except when using Blood Pacts. Another possible solution? Give us perpetuation -3 or more on an item level staff please.
   
   Note for forum trolls who are about to quote me and troll: I have refresh +2 with Eminent Staff equipped, weapon drawn, and a standard avatar out, but refresh +3 with Bahamut's Staff, weapon drawn, and a standard avatar out. I'm not lacking for perpetuation reduction armor, but I would like my +3 refresh with an avatar out.

Completely agreed. This is a serious issue and directly punishes players for working together. Two human players in the same area will make a lot better exp per hour by staying separated with 3 trusts each, than to team up. They would benefit from not partying even if they could summon trust in a party (which you said you'd let us do, but it wasn't added in this most recent update).

in fear of being called out for suggesting the game to be made "too easy" (kind of too late to worry about at this point in the game's life though), I really think it is time to make exp not be divided among party members, and just give all party members the same exp as they would have gotten solo. This should at least be the case within a single party, and outside of abyssea. That being said, I wouldn't exactly mind if it applied for an entire alliance either. I guess it makes sense to not include abyssea, because those areas use completely different EXP mechanics anyway. Also, exp is more than good enough in there already.

While we're at it, we should be allowed to use Fellow NPCs in level synced parties.

Frankly, I don't understand why there's an EXP penalty for having more people in a party to begin with. If anything, there should be a EXP bonus as an incentive to party up.

Historically, it wasn't an exp penalty. EXP over time would almost always increase when you partied, solo exp was usually completely rotten because you had a lot of downtime and took forever to kill monsters alone. The problem is that the exp model hasn't changed along with how the game has changed. Right now, it makes sense to not divide exp among party members, but back in the day, the current model already gave you around 4 times more exp in a party, and using the model we're asking for now would have caused oldschool parties to gain 24 times more exp in a party compared to solo.

[Teraniku]

Looks Like Aphmau is in the next batch of Alter Egos for trust in the March update. Which means our Future Fabulous partner is next

[Evogolist]

Looks Like Aphmau is in the next batch of Alter Egos for trust in the March update. Which means our Future Fabulous partner is next

Yeah I saw that too, I've actually been staring at the picture since they posted the news about the next update wondering if they'll allow Aphmau to summon Ovjang and Mnejing or will they short change us and just make her an attacker or healer trust npc. Guess we'll have to wait until next month's update to see. But hey we're getting Lekho for the next Log In Campaign so I wouldn't be surprised if Mumour is mixed in there some where...unless SE is holding out until a certain summer event.

[Camate]

Greetings!

We've been seeing some feedback mentioning that when fighting high level monsters, Trust alter egos' accuracy and attack power felt somewhat low and would not rise above a certain value.

The stats on alter egos have been slightly scaled back at the upper echelons of item levels. Originally, Trust alter egos were developed to aid low level adventurers and for when adventuring solo, so if you are out fighting against strong enemies in Outer Ra’Kaznar, you may feel accuracy or other stats are a bit lacking.

However, we understand that you would like to use alter egos even at the high levels and we checked up on some tips to make it easier to use your alter ego.

1. Procure equipment with high item levels
   Trust alter ego stats reference the average item level of your equipment. Due to this, instead of worrying about individual parameters, just wearing equipment with higher item levels will boost the stats of the alter egos you use. To give you an example, if you go from wearing two pieces of item level 109 equipment and then trade them out for two pieces of 117 equipment from Records of Eminence, the alter ego’s accuracy will increase close to 10%.
   
   
2. Utilize support effects
   Trust alter egos are treated the same was as if they were another player in your party, so all support effects such as spells, songs, and rolls can be applied to them. By applying these buffs to support-type alter egos or those with a support-type support job, their accuracy will increase further.

Though for the future, we are currently looking into elements that will allow you to boost the special characteristics of Trust alter egos, which will also in turn increase their stats.

[Lithera]

But they still are not effected by mana mists and the like. Where actual party members are.

[Vivivivi]

One suggestion I'd like to see (and I realize I may be in the minority!) is the npc's using dialogue similar to adventure fellows– when they get low on hp or mp would actually be helpful for gameplay, or if a mage(ish) character is silenced for example, that would also be helpful. It would be a lot of fun if they used party chat "in character".

I'm sure others would immediately want a command to disable this XD

[MDenham]

One suggestion I'd like to see (and I realize I may be in the minority!) is the npc's using dialogue similar to adventure fellows– when they get low on hp or mp would actually be helpful for gameplay, or if a mage(ish) character is silenced for example, that would also be helpful. It would be a lot of fun if they used party chat "in character".

I'm sure others would immediately want a command to disable this XD

For what it's worth, this requires them to put the appropriate dialogue into every zone where NPCs can be summoned - meaning a rather large update is required.

[Glamdring]

Greetings!

We've been seeing some feedback mentioning that when fighting high level monsters, Trust alter egos' accuracy and attack power felt somewhat low and would not rise above a certain value.

The stats on alter egos have been slightly scaled back at the upper echelons of item levels. Originally, Trust alter egos were developed to aid low level adventurers and for when adventuring solo, so if you are out fighting against strong enemies in Outer Ra’Kaznar, you may feel accuracy or other stats are a bit lacking.

However, we understand that you would like to use alter egos even at the high levels and we checked up on some tips to make it easier to use your alter ego.

1. Procure equipment with high item levels
   Trust alter ego stats reference the average item level of your equipment. Due to this, instead of worrying about individual parameters, just wearing equipment with higher item levels will boost the stats of the alter egos you use. To give you an example, if you go from wearing two pieces of item level 109 equipment and then trade them out for two pieces of 117 equipment from Records of Eminence, the alter ego’s accuracy will increase close to 10%.
   
   
2. Utilize support effects
   Trust alter egos are treated the same was as if they were another player in your party, so all support effects such as spells, songs, and rolls can be applied to them. By applying these buffs to support-type alter egos or those with a support-type support job, their accuracy will increase further.

Though for the future, we are currently looking into elements that will allow you to boost the special characteristics of Trust alter egos, which will also in turn increase their stats.

did they start getting affected by avatars favor and geo auras when I wasn't looking? I'll admit I haven't used either job with trust in about 5 days but they seemed to have no effect then...

[Demonjustin]

Procure equipment with high item levels
Trust alter ego stats reference the average item level of your equipment. Due to this, instead of worrying about individual parameters, just wearing equipment with higher item levels will boost the stats of the alter egos you use. To give you an example, if you go from wearing two pieces of item level 109 equipment and then trade them out for two pieces of 117 equipment from Records of Eminence, the alter ego’s accuracy will increase close to 10%.

I am a Red Mage, I melee, my best melee gear I can obtain without going through painstaking low drop rates is the Espial set, the Espial set is 117. I own an Excalibur which is level 119 and off-hand a Dagger I obtained via trading in Sparks. My NPCs have bad accuracy issues in even lower areas such as Woh Gates, where monsters are level 113, I refuse to use level 119 gear that will make me much weaker so that my NPCs can get a bit more accuracy, it is ludicrous that they do not simply work off our weapons as they should, just make them like BST pets and base their level off of the weapon we have in our main hand when summoning them, it will make everyone happy and it will be easier than constantly having the game recalculate their stats every time we swap gear.

[Glamdring]

I am a Red Mage, I melee, my best melee gear I can obtain without going through painstaking low drop rates is the Espial set, the Espial set is 117. I own an Excalibur which is level 119 and off-hand a Dagger I obtained via trading in Sparks. My NPCs have bad accuracy issues in even lower areas such as Woh Gates, where monsters are level 113, I refuse to use level 119 gear that will make me much weaker so that my NPCs can get a bit more accuracy, it is ludicrous that they do not simply work off our weapons as they should, just make them like BST pets and base their level off of the weapon we have in our main hand when summoning them, it will make everyone happy and it will be easier than constantly having the game recalculate their stats every time we swap gear.

Sounds like they are basing their scaling off the score for-in your example-acc instead of the iLevel. What they NEED to do is in their averaging figure the relative iLevel and then apply that to the trust NPC’s job table-using the assumption of a comparable gear stats to what a reasonably geared player on the job would have at that iLevel. This will be complicated by the fact that some seem to have no subjob. Then you still have to factor in things like Pld isn’t an especially accurate melee to begin with. But the way things are now it looks more like-as in your example-the determination is made off a not especially accurate rdm, then applied to a pld table. So, in your example Trion should be treated, statwise, as an iLevel 118 Pld/War in full outrider gear but a 119 Sword, and an eminence shield. But what he IS treated like-factoring in the skill-cap differences between the 2 jobs-is a 113ish pld/war for acc, but with 118 gear for dmg numbers.

basically, what I'm saying is they need to only factor your iLevel, and then apply it for Trion to a pld/war with that ilevel, instead of using your iLevel rdm/?, AND they need to give the NPCs without subs subs to make them scale properly.