The Plea for Squadrons: They Are Just as Useful as Trusts!

I want to preface this post with this. As of this writing, we are going through COVID-19 issues as well as Patch 5.3 in August. This is in no way an "I want it now" post, instead it being some thoughts that I hope the devs can look at for the future.

With that out of the way .....

I believe Squadrons have been neglected since Trusts came out, and that is a pity. There is a lot you can do with them to help us as players. Let me explain.

Note: If you wish to know about Squadrons in general, please check out this page on them. I'll be touching on points that won't be fully explained (as that would take a while), so just pop back on that link to understand more intricacies.

1. Let's start out with their classes. No squadron member can learn a Job (meaning having thier 'soul crystal'). I feel this affects a the skills that can be used in a dungeon (will touch on skills later). Since dungeons for Squadrons start with Halatali (lvl20) and go up to Pharos Sirius (Hard) (lvl60), not having Jobs for our squadron feels detrimental.

- Have a way they can become a Job after level 30 (since they level just like we do). Perhaps manuals like we have now.

2. Next comes skills. Squadron members use skills that are no longer in the game. Since so much as changed, they need to be updated with what we have now. Not sure how much work this is, but Trust members have present days skills (their names can be different though still the same).

3. Those danger cones/lines/circles. Trust AI can get out of the way of them, why can't our Squadron? Would love that coded in please. In this line of thinking, there needs to be chances that our Squadron gets hit and not just us. Right now, only we get hit with dungeon mechanics (ex. Aurum Vale, we get hit with the debuffs we need to eat fruit for). Why not have squadrons be able to get hit with things?

Note: I understand the reasoning why squadron can't use the fruit so that's fine. But why not get void pools under them from the boss as the end of DD?

What are your thoughts? I love to use the Squadron to practice tanking and get items to use or break down. In no way do I want them to replace Trusts or to be used as Trusts. But there is so much more that can be done!

Yea I kind of wish they touched up on Squadrons but I think it's going to be a bit more work needed on the dev's team to get it behave like trusts. I say this because as you pointed out about the lack of a job so to speak but they are also based on the old 2.0 skill and role action sets. Side note, I definitely love the Gladiator squadron team member at offensive/balance stance 4/5 because they turn into a flash machine and can hold mobs like no one elses business. However, since squadron members are based off the old 2.0 skills and such for classes I do believe they are just based off the ARR/HW NPCs coding and that is where dev team would have to some major work to make them there on entity. I honestly don't think I ever seen a regular NPC that you fought, against that was an actual job, they always been bases classes like glad, lcr, conjurer and such. I could be wrong and I am not including Trial and or raid bosses in this picture.

As for the AI portion (dodging aoes and such), I think its tied into the base NPCs AI you fight and would require a lot of rework. Imagine if mobs you fought against got out of the way of AOEs no one wants that honestly because that would drag out fights.

I definitely want them to do something about squadron. maybe get rid of the current squadron team members and have it where they have fix trusts that you can recruit but they are job locked kind of like shadowbringers. There is not an easy answer to fixing it.

I do wish I could take my squadron out in the map to do certain fates that are not being done anymore hardly and would not mind being able to do unsync dungeons with them for glam farming lol

For sure. I've mentioned it a few times elsewhere but I would love to see a unification of the Squadron, Companion and Trust systems. Let us level our Squadrons to level cap just like we can with Trusts. Let us use our Chocobo in place of one of our Squadron members in a Command Mission. Let us bring a chosen Squadron member out into the open world with us instead of our Chocobo. Etc. Right now we have 3 different but similar systems all basically designed to do similar things that just feel like incomplete dead ends. It would be great to see them all just put into the same complete system come 6.0.

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Originally Posted by StriderShinryu

For sure. I've mentioned it a few times elsewhere but I would love to see a unification of the Squadron, Companion and Trust systems. Let us level our Squadrons to level cap just like we can with Trusts. Let us use our Chocobo in place of one of our Squadron members in a Command Mission. Let us bring a chosen Squadron member out into the open world with us instead of our Chocobo. Etc. Right now we have 3 different but similar systems all basically designed to do similar things that just feel like incomplete dead ends. It would be great to see them all just put into the same complete system come 6.0.

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These are my feelings when I saw the Trust system come out. I'm like, they dropped Squadrons to make Trusts, something that essentially does the same thing but with named NPC?

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Originally Posted by MsMisato

Yea I kind of wish they touched up on Squadrons but I think it's going to be a bit more work needed on the dev's team to get it behave like trusts. I say this because as you pointed out about the lack of a job so to speak but they are also based on the old 2.0 skill and role action sets. Side note, I definitely love the Gladiator squadron team member at offensive/balance stance 4/5 because they turn into a flash machine and can hold mobs like no one elses business. However, since squadron members are based off the old 2.0 skills and such for classes I do believe they are just based off the ARR/HW NPCs coding and that is where dev team would have to some major work to make them there on entity.

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Yes I do understand what you mean. Alot of the class quests from 1-50 have the NPCs use Stoneskin still!

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I honestly don't think I ever seen a regular NPC that you fought, against that was an actual job, they always been bases classes like glad, lcr, conjurer and such. I could be wrong and I am not including Trial and or raid bosses in this picture.

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Hm, that is an interesting comment I've never thought about. Makes me wonder about the NPCs in class/job quests what skills they use?

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As for the AI portion (dodging aoes and such), I think its tied into the base NPCs AI you fight and would require a lot of rework. Imagine if mobs you fought against got out of the way of AOEs no one wants that honestly because that would drag out fights.

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So you feel in order for Squadron AI to move out of AoEs, they would have to be totally reworked like Trusts? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, AI mobs in Trust dungeons don't move out of Trust skills that I recall. It's just annoying when my tank stands still and gets a faceful of Bad Breath when they could have walked 2 feet to the left (and I agree the GLD squad member is a BEAST)

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I definitely want them to do something about squadron. maybe get rid of the current squadron team members and have it where they have fix trusts that you can recruit but they are job locked kind of like shadowbringers. There is not an easy answer to fixing it.

I do wish I could take my squadron out in the map to do certain fates that are not being done anymore hardly and would not mind being able to do unsync dungeons with them for glam farming lol

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One thing I love about FFXI's Trust system. Link to that here. You can call them out onto the field to fight with you, and they level with you. They have HP and Mana just like you as well.

I never want Trusts or Squadrons to replace us players in any way. But having that option to use NPCs when you want to putz for an hour, or do a dungeon before heading off to work would be pretty neat.

Grand Company related content within the game has been neglected as a whole imo. I would definitely like to see squadrons get some love but I feel that GC's need a complete rework, or at least an update. Something similar to what was recently done with Free Company rank cap increase would maybe be a start or make GC seals more useful outside of farming old relics for glam or buying ventures.

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Originally Posted by AngelCheese77

3. Those danger cones/lines/circles. Trust AI can get out of the way of them, why can't our Squadron? Would love that coded in please. In this line of thinking, there needs to be chances that our Squadron gets hit and not just us. Right now, only we get hit with dungeon mechanics (ex. Aurum Vale, we get hit with the debuffs we need to eat fruit for). Why not have squadrons be able to get hit with things?

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Trusts get out of the way because they're specially programmed for every encounter. They are not driven by an AI in a way that you could plop them into any encounter and they would dodge the AoEs, it's all scripted. It's why we only have trusts for new dungeons, the trusts are scripted with the fights as they are made.

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Originally Posted by AngelCheese77

1. Let's start out with their classes. No squadron member can learn a Job (meaning having thier 'soul crystal'). I feel this affects a the skills that can be used in a dungeon (will touch on skills later). Since dungeons for Squadrons start with Halatali (lvl20) and go up to Pharos Sirius (Hard) (lvl60), not having Jobs for our squadron feels detrimental.

- Have a way they can become a Job after level 30 (since they level just like we do). Perhaps manuals like we have now.

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This is simply because they've designed the squadrons to be lore compliant; Considering certain jobs in the lore like WHM & BLM are under extremely tight lockdown on who can get soul crystals, a random squadron working for a grand company would never be a candidate. Not to say I agree with this decision, but if they want them to remain lore compliant they'll never have job crystals.

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Originally Posted by AngelCheese77

3. Those danger cones/lines/circles. Trust AI can get out of the way of them, why can't our Squadron? Would love that coded in please. In this line of thinking, there needs to be chances that our Squadron gets hit and not just us. Right now, only we get hit with dungeon mechanics (ex. Aurum Vale, we get hit with the debuffs we need to eat fruit for). Why not have squadrons be able to get hit with things?

Note: I understand the reasoning why squadron can't use the fruit so that's fine. But why not get void pools under them from the boss as the end of DD?

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It's due to how they're coded. While trusts are considered full fledged party members by the in-game system as they are programmed much differently than Squadrons, Squadrons are programmed using the same code as pre-SHB pets, wherein they have a battlefield presence, but as far as the game is concerned, are invalid targets for targeted boss mechanics. I'm going to guess they were programmed this way since it would allow them to recycle code from pet actions as the system for that was already set up. Or perhaps it was the only way they could set up controllable squadrons, as the alternative is that the trusts are completely autonomous and the squadrons likely would be the same if they had the same programming as the trusts. They even have the 'take much less damage from ground aoes' mechanic that the old pets did.

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Originally Posted by MariaArvana

They even have the 'take much less damage from ground aoes' mechanic that the old pets did.

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Funny you say that. I can run the entire Aurum Vale dungeon as a Scholar buy standing back and setting them loose all on their own. Heck, they stand in the zappy water in Halatali and never blink. Only time they die is getting slapped by some boss mechanics.

It would be nice to see the content get an update~!

While the thread was made before trusts, so some of the desires don't quite make sense anymore, I feel quite similarly. I'd like to see squadrons, trusts, and even the other companion systems, get a sort of unification through line that makes each one have sense and (updated) place in the world (not just in sense of a place with features, but also world space). Rather than what it feels like right now where it seems reasonable to view trusts as the death sentence of squadrons. I'd be willing for revamps that change the content more than a little if each piece could fit nicely in the puzzle, just so long the end result is not losing any features (like if they decided to take trust system all the way back into 2.0, and find something different for squadrons). Not particularly picky on what happens, just like I said so long as it's not going to kill a feature or progress made in the end (maxed offense on all my squadrons, I like that they can destroy a dungeon faster than most PUG- if they did something with trusts but it took 4x as long with no upgrade path I'd be a bit disappointed lol).

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Originally Posted by MariaArvana

This is simply because they've designed the squadrons to be lore compliant; Considering certain jobs in the lore like WHM & BLM are under extremely tight lockdown on who can get soul crystals, a random squadron working for a grand company would never be a candidate. Not to say I agree with this decision, but if they want them to remain lore compliant they'll never have job crystals.

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I could see perhaps the GC giving us a bit more free reign due to our renown. Special branch of the GC directed with less oversight than a normal branch- giving us a bit more wiggle room in who we hire too, if they wanted to add moogles, chocobos, beastmen, weird and questionable jobs, or whatever.

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Originally Posted by MariaArvana

This is simply because they've designed the squadrons to be lore compliant; Considering certain jobs in the lore like WHM & BLM are under extremely tight lockdown on who can get soul crystals, a random squadron working for a grand company would never be a candidate. Not to say I agree with this decision, but if they want them to remain lore compliant they'll never have job crystals.

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But somehow our retainers are allowed to have job crystals c.c

I want to have a Scholar, because the squadron healer AI is just terrible and I trust the fairy more >.>


And can we at least unlock lvl 60 - 70 dungeons for Squadrons please? Would make leveling these jobs I have absolutely no interest in and are not willing to learn the job mechanics so much better if I could level them completely with NPC teams (I want the Amaro mount, otherwise I would never touch these jobs).

I'll add here what I wrote on another thread:

"My wish is that they'd update the squadron level and AI, so we could run ALL the dungeons up to 71 with them (since we have Trust system from there on), no matter the class/job you are playing. It would be a ton of fun for me, and the chance to run dungeons that I have only done once (personally, I am not fond of df except for raids and frontlines, and the unfortunately remote possibility of running with 3 friends; while I find pf useful for old Ex mount farms, or helping someone to have a first clear for their msq or their Hildibrand). And if I want to dream on, I'd love to be have the chance to do trials with squadrons and Trusts too."

I'd also love if they could have a job soul, by the way.

I understand the lore behind not giving squadrons job stones, but I also think that the loss of job skills has a major impact on their performance. Not getting regens from the healer because she isn't a White Mage is rough in some places. They should give the squadrons these skills and just not give them the official title "White Mage," "Black Mage," etc.

The other thing that irks me is that not all dungeons are available to squadrons for seemingly illogical reasons. Why are Haukke Manor (NM) and Cutter's Cry not available? I ran into this while trying to level an alt.

I'd be happy with just having Trust dungeons up to 70. Even just Sirensong, Shisui and Doma Castle would be plenty to bridge that gap from 60-71. They don't need to add job stones or improve the AI right away if it burns resources, but having a few more dungeons would mean you could Squadron and Trust your way to 80 if that's your preferred way to play. So far Squadrons or trusts haven't damaged queue times at all, so I see no reason to hold back on adding more.

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Originally Posted by sarehptar

I understand the lore behind not giving squadrons job stones, but I also think that the loss of job skills has a major impact on their performance. Not getting regens from the healer because she isn't a White Mage is rough in some places. They should give the squadrons these skills and just not give them the official title "White Mage," "Black Mage," etc.

The other thing that irks me is that not all dungeons are available to squadrons for seemingly illogical reasons. Why are Haukke Manor (NM) and Cutter's Cry not available? I ran into this while trying to level an alt.

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I'm not so sure about Cutter's Cry, but in the case of Haukke Manor, I believe it has to do with the second and last boss. I think if you used return after killing the second boss, they wont teleport with you. For the last boss, it's the lights - you'd have to turn those off yourself, and yeah I know you could just skip those.

They didn't put Haukke Manor or Sunken Temple of Qarn in for the Squadron dungeons for the same reason they didn't put in Sastasha, Tam-tara, or Copperbell. These dungeons are linked with the MSQ at one point or another, and they wanted to maintain the queue times for people who haven't gained their squadrons yet.

As for Cutter's Cry, it's because the chance for your squadron mates to glitch out is probably pretty high, given their scripted agro behavior can sometimes cause them to run off towards an agro'd monster in weird ways. If you tried to skip trash in Cutter's Cry by sprinting to the quicksand doors, your squadron would get stuck behind you, and I guess there's potential to soft lock your progress in the dungeon. So rather than have to deal with reworking them, they left the dungeon out of the pot.

I assume Brayflox and Stone Vigil made it into the pot, because there's nothing for the Squad to get hung up on really, and queue times for those dungeons are never an issue.

Of course, this is all just my speculation. It's also entirely possible that the way they weighted Squad EXP rewards for each dungeon meant that they wanted to leave out certain dungeons on purpose, just because they felt they couldn't weight them properly, or that it was possible to finish the dungeon(Cutter's Cry) so quickly that for the purpose of Squadron EXP gains, it would cancel out running the later dungeons.

I'd love for them to update Squadron scripts so that the LNC aren't locked into the broken combo anymore, never able to apply Chaos Thrust. Beyond that, I'd really just like them to let us take the Squad to some of the mid 60s and 70s dungeons. Shisui of the Violet Tide, Bardam's Mettle, Castrum Abania would be good for me, for that level range. Then for the 70 dungeons, Ala Mhigo, Skalla, The Burn, and Ghimlyt Dark would all be nice to do with Squadron. They've been stuck at 60 for so long, it feels like, the squadron on my main hasn't done anything worthwhile in years(other than rack up food/exp buff manuals for me).

Another thing they could do with looking at is the class disparity. Very few know it, but currently several Squadron classes like Pugilist are a good bit behind others, such as Rogue or Archer. It could be the AI, or it could be player class changes somehow reflecting on Squadron classes. Thaumaturge is flat out bugged, having less than half the dps of a Rogue.

For maximum Squadron speed dungeoning, you take a MRD, CNJ and 2 Rogue, train them all to Offensive Mastery 5 and they'll melt any dungeon. It's the fastest leveling available from 20-60 once you're set up.

The squadrons need to be giving the trust AI at the very least. I can't tell you how many times I have the tank run ahead he aggros the one I targeted and leaves all the other to make a B-line to me not picking up their aggro and leaving me to die.