Am I Wrong For Being Slightly Unimpressed by Low level Duty Support/Trust?

assuming you have your squadron somewhat progressed, it just always feels better to run with squadron than trust in ARR dungeons.

Im not sure if it's just the presence of offensive mastery for your squadrons or if there just tuned higher, but holy cow your trust members almost do negative damage in duty support.

It sucks because I was super excited for ARR trust, I'm not a fan of micromanaging the squadron members (because due to server tic and their sluggish response time, it's literally the illusion of choice. Oh, squadron member standing in an aoe? better move him, but oh wait, he didnt respond to my command until after server tic so he got hit anyways)

That, coupled with the fact that squadrons dont have access to all dungeons, I was hyped for trust. But now it feels like it's worth grinding out brayflox for 12 levels with squadrons rather than slogging through literally any dungeon with trust..

Trusts in general are kind of bad. High level ones don't really do AoEs when you pull larger in there, healing can be suspect, etc.

I would assume they don't want it to be too good for whatever reason.

I hoped they would expand Squadrons, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Personally, no you're not wrong. I substantially like the ability of my squadrons output more than trusts. Trusts are the wettest and most soggiest of noodles. Squadron AI is awful, and it takes some investment to get them to a really nice functional level, but once you do they run absolute complete circuits of circles around trusts.

I don't know if they changed it but one major complaints I have with Trusts is they were designed to do worse the better you are doing and better the worse you are. As they wanted to ensure a certain amount of time to completion. To me this just encourages playing awfully and feeling awful about doing it too. Like "this is my team when I want to progress in the game but I don't want to actually enjoy the game". Which don't get me wrong, I really like them the first time I do content as I feel it's cool to have that first time MSQ-vibe with a team, doing all of the content at my own pace (looking at the pretty environments for as long as I want for example).

While I don't think it should be in the form of levels, and I'm glad they are moving away from that concept, I do really wish they considered some other sort of progression. Because they're pretty rough. There may be some argument at DF, and I didn't have access to the data for squadrons, but my impression was the squadron system had no real impact to the DF participation rates and yet they're massively more rewarding in many more situations (imo). For example when running with my squadron with the bleeding edge of damage set and I'm creating huge piles of mobs, pushing my tanking or healing to limits, as I bring the entire dungeon to the first boss, absolutely destroy the boss faster than you'd think should be possible, and power charge into the next space with mobs still traipsing behind, ... feels fun. Doing well feels good.

I understand they might not want Trusts to be 'that' good, maybe they thought squadrons went too far when properly kitted, but I'm not sure I agree that trusts have to be 'this bad' either lol.

Anyway, I too am Jack's total sense of being unimpressed by our, supposedly, mighty companions weak participation in content. (But I still like the concept, and I do actively use them the first time around, but will avoid them otherwise unless I'm doing something weird like cooking and know I may afk in the middle of content). Would love to see them improved (and squadrons perhaps moved to a new different type of content / concept).

it's just weird to think about. an archer in your squadron with offensive mastery does more damage by itself than all three members of your trust do in. it's pitiful.

at this point i just wish theyd add all the other ARR/HW dungeons not currently available for squadron. feels bad that there's nearly 10 level gaps in between some dungeons available to squadrons

I'm upset that they made a whole "new" system, and they didn't really fix or change anything with them. It would have been a good time to expand on the idea. Such as allowing the NPCs to AOE or letting groups with two people make use of the system.

Honestly wish they would do a little bit more with Trusts/Support and Squadrons.

Duty Support is an absolute joke.

Trusts always underperformed compared to squadron, so I'm not surprised.
Also, I noticed that duty support is avalaible for less dungeons than squadrons are, which is a big minus. But on the other hand you only unlock squadron by the time that on your main class you don't need it anymore, while you use the duty support from the start, so for newbies there's that I guess?
The other day i was trying to do AV on an alt for the GC quest (to unlock the squadron on her, in fact) but it was just never popping, so I decided to give the duty support a chance and run it like that but ofc it's not an option, only msq dungeons are, which is meh.

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Originally Posted by SkyCake

I'm upset that they made a whole "new" system, and they didn't really fix or change anything with them. It would have been a good time to expand on the idea. Such as allowing the NPCs to AOE or letting groups with two people make use of the system.

Honestly wish they would do a little bit more with Trusts/Support and Squadrons.

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To be fair, there are alot more effort put into duty support allies so I imagine in their mind that there is "nothing wrong" with them, and that they serve their purpose as is; iirc it was said that they should not be as good as players. "If you want to Go Fast, get some humans" seems to be the deliberate message.

Whether or not you agree with this ideal, and to what degree, is key. "This does not fit its purpose" is much different that "this purpose is bad, actually". Personally, I think giving human parties its own advantages is admirable. That said, I do find myself caring less inclined to level the avatars compared to the squadron. It's probably because it has a more realized support system (missions, rewards) more than anything else, even if the actual ai is very, very dumb.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

To be fair, there are alot more effort put into duty support allies so I imagine in their mind that there is "nothing wrong" with them, and that they serve their purpose as is; iirc it was said that they should not be as good as players. "If you want to Go Fast, get some humans" seems to be the deliberate message.

Whether or not you agree with this ideal, and to what degree, is key. "This does not fit its purpose" is much different that "this purpose is bad, actually". Personally, I think giving human parties its own advantages is admirable. That said, I do find myself caring less inclined to level the avatars compared to the squadron. It's probably because it has a more realized support system (missions, rewards) more than anything else, even if the actual ai is very, very dumb.

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I mentioned AoE for the NPCs mostly because it kind of looks silly and might promote poor gameplay. Really, I actually want to go slow with a friend. Spend like 1+ hour in a dungeon and not worry about the other two in the party getting impatient. When I was returning to FFXIV recently, I was really hoping Duty Support would let that happen. Ah well.

Also need more femroe Squadron members as I have all the current ones. :c

Not a big deal in the end either since I think the system as a whole is pretty nifty. Even with the AI.

Squadrons have some nice old school spells and can ignore a lot of things, but I found them problematic in some dungeons. WP (hard) comes to mind.

I think down the road they'll come around to improving squadron and perhaps expand what they're capable of doing. We might have to wait til they're caught up with duty support for all the existing dungeons.