I'd honestly love to just see the Trust and Squadron systems blown wide open

Honestly, I forget Squadrons exist most of the time, even though I make an effort to send them on missions whenever I go to Ul'dah for the glamour dresser (seems the most convenient location, as I'm in Immortal Flames).

It's obviously not a bad system, but it seems a bit sad that there's a full catalog of "characters" that you can get to join your Squadron, but you're limited to only eight total. Especially when there are also "special" members you have a rare chance to recruit, who have unique glamours.

For that matter, between trying to handle all their different glamours, the fact you can change classes but only with rare consumable items, and the "Bonus" effects for pairing them up with certain other members... the system honestly feels a little unwieldy.

Yet, there *is* something kind of cool about building those guys up, and forming your own little "army". I've still not quite gotten a handle on the "Trust" system and needing to level up those characters separately, but it's hard not to see immediate comparison between the two systems.

Personally, I can't help but wonder if it would be worth "merging" these two systems in some capacity, and just revamping them a bit? Maybe instead of all these different Squadron manuals where "sometimes RNG will get you a different character" or "now this character can become a different class", maybe just say "Hey, if you've completed certain optional quests that already exist, these characters will join your Squadron".

And obviously, the Scions and friends just automatically join your as part of the MSQ.

And instead of actively changing jobs, or having to manage a billion different Glamours, maybe you just say each character is assigned to their default job, and one or two full "Outfits" they can unlock. After all, there are a LOT of potential Squadron members already, and it might help give them more personality if they had their own outfits to unlock, instead of just slapping your own gear onto them.

To differentiate them, I'd keep the "normal" Squadron members as the base "Classes", while only the Scions and crew get the more prestigious "Jobs". Maybe Scions are a bit stronger, while the other characters get their unique Synergy Bonuses, so you have a little incentive no matter how you want to build out your own team.

I dunno. I think the Squadrons are just a really cool system, that unfortunately feels a bit bogged-down by being fairly obsolete. And with so much time and care having gone into creating all those characters for the Squadrons, it would honestly be cool if you could unlock ALL of them.

And hey, maybe they could randomly appear and walk around your Personal Island Sanctuary? In fact, that would be a really cool way to bring attention to this revamped system.

Any thoughts?

Most definitely!

Although I am leaning towards more to have usage of our personal retainers.

Honestly either way it would be fantastic & more engaging…even better, have them as our combat partners when PvEing like our Chocobos.

So many potentials….I truly wonder if you’re indeed listening to is SE as much as I am skeptical

I'm just past having all jobs at 60 now, so yea, it's a bitter sweet moment to think that there's no real point to Squadrons anymore. I enjoyed building my squadron and leveling them up, and seeing their damage go from awful to actually really good. I'd love to see them incorporated somehow into Trust/duty support.

They should be expanded beyond the Grand Companies to be our personal Warrior of Light Squadron. You know all those "Adventurers" we're told by the NPCs to gather for the story-required trials and dungeons could just be changed to our squadron.

Also allow our Chocobo Companion to join the Squad and go into dungeons, as well as retainers.

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Originally Posted by LioJen

They should be expanded beyond the Grand Companies to be our personal Warrior of Light Squadron. You know all those "Adventurers" we're told by the NPCs to gather for the story-required trials and dungeons could just be changed to our squadron.

Also allow our Chocobo Companion to join the Squad and go into dungeons, as well as retainers.

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Chocobo sure. Retainers, nah. They're OP as hell considering they solo EX trials as DoL and DoH jobs...

The meta for squadron tactics is almost brain-dead but it's still more than what you can do with Trusts. Trusts are really a worse version of squadrons for players who aren't too lazy to push 2 extra buttons once in a long while. They rarely use AoEs, they stop doing everything they're doing to evade mechanics, they're slower than snails, and you can't even adjust their offense x defense stat priorities.
Leveling squadrons up has the added benefit of making missions easier to complete, increasing the range of guaranteed rewards you can get. The only reason you level trusts is to change their costumes, which look pretty meh anyway.

Giving Trusts a little teensy extra depth and flexibility wouldn't affect people who are satisfied with their current shoddy implementation but it would satisfy people like me more as well. As someone who completed every squadron related achievement I never had any issues leading them through dungeons, even with the dungeons not being designed for squadrons, so their explanation that dungeons needed to be designed the way they are because of Trusts/Duty Support has always sounded like complete bullshit to me.

Trusts right now are nothing but glorified training wheels for insecure players at best, or a tool for the typical Limsa AFKer subscriber to also AFK-level at worst.

Duty Support/Squadrons/Companions/Retainers should have all been one big unified system where you can recruit NPCs or make your own. Bring one with you out into the open world to fight monsters with you, or send them on jobs to gather materials and trophies. Form a party with them to clear dungeons without needing to use Duty Finder, or dispatch a group to fulfill Grand Company missions.

Disconnect the storage and market board systems from these NPCs, as that never really made much sense to me anyway. Just have your item storage be its own NPC in town, a quick single-click interface to open your bank. And have the market board itself be your interface for both buying and selling -- it never should have been split between two different places.

You could still have a chocobo companion as your first basic unit, but I think it would just be for open world stuff alongside you and not for dungeons or missions. Maybe you could even capture and train other monster types for companions too, and they'd have their own unique abilities. I wonder, if Beast Master ends up being the new Limited Job, is this the kind of thing it will do?

i find it very weird that they separated it from trusts seemingly for no reason.

i guess it's because maintaining the rest of the system (sending people out on missions etc) would be annoying and you'd have to make a 2nd group of people to have in any shb dungeons but like... man. it's lame they just neglected it.

Can’t happen. They’re working on FF8 Polygon Remaster. Please give the small indie company money.

Not sure how it is now but Squadrons used to be the fastest way to level through most early parts of game once you got their maxed Offensive Tactics. I guess they didn't want AI to be better than players so they implemented the trust system that actually does the mechanics and doesn't cruise through everything with slight micro management.

Still it's a waste of fun system and could have been reiterated on.

Personally I would overhaul the trust system bigtime (not the MSQ trust, just the free-team mode).
Right now trusts are very limited and locked into their associated expansion and the leveling of them seems near pointless (unless you really want to bring trust X into this dungeon they weren't in before.
Instead I would make a new system where any unlocked trust could be brought into any unlocked dungeon that supports trusts. And instead of grinding levels (they stay synced with your level) you will grind rank for them.

For example with Urianger, he starts at rank 1 and when he gets to rank 2 he can use Earthly Star, rank 4 might be Royal Road, rank 7 could be Spread, rank 9 might lower the cooldown of his Death spell, while rank 10 would be an outfit.
And you're not limited to just the story NPCs, but can unlock a lot of different NPCs from the game, each with their own unlock requirements. Hien could require to complete the Doman restoration, and at rank 10 you unlock his LB3 as a glamour for your SAM.
Some trusts would also have synergies, such as the twins, or perhaps Lyna having synergy with a melee DPS for bonuses. They would also have different LBs (like alisaie's LB2) and temperaments with them. Plus personality would play in how they behave, so Hamon Holifist might be a bit slow to dodge, or Dorgono will ignore AoEs if she's in frenzy.

All this could make it more fun to rank up each trust and have them useable across all content instead of being tied to each expansion. Make your dream team and bring them to any dungeon you want. For lore reason (like how Hien is with your in Satasha), call it rememberance mode and you have your own "what if?".

There's a part of me that would almost prefer them resurrecting the idea of the "Crystal Braves" and using that as a basis for updating this system.

In fairness, I'm also a HUGE fan of Revenant's Toll, so having that as a potential home-base again would be great. Learning from the mistakes of the past, where this new band of Crystal Braves are purely volunteering adventurers, so there isn't the political issues of the original organization that Alphy founded, keeping the dream alive.

Or like I said, maybe just establishing your Island Sanctuary as a new branch of the "Adventurer's Guild" or something, for expressly tied to any one Grand Company?

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

The meta for squadron tactics is almost brain-dead but it's still more than what you can do with Trusts. Trusts are really a worse version of squadrons for players who aren't too lazy to push 2 extra buttons once in a long while. They rarely use AoEs, they stop doing everything they're doing to evade mechanics, they're slower than snails, and you can't even adjust their offense x defense stat priorities.
Leveling squadrons up has the added benefit of making missions easier to complete, increasing the range of guaranteed rewards you can get. The only reason you level trusts is to change their costumes, which look pretty meh anyway.

Giving Trusts a little teensy extra depth and flexibility wouldn't affect people who are satisfied with their current shoddy implementation but it would satisfy people like me more as well. As someone who completed every squadron related achievement I never had any issues leading them through dungeons, even with the dungeons not being designed for squadrons, so their explanation that dungeons needed to be designed the way they are because of Trusts/Duty Support has always sounded like complete bullshit to me.

Trusts right now are nothing but glorified training wheels for insecure players at best, or a tool for the typical Limsa AFKer subscriber to also AFK-level at worst.

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That was always my issue with TRUST. They are slow & I don't think they do AOEs, if they do, it is weak.

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

Not sure how it is now but Squadrons used to be the fastest way to level through most early parts of game once you got their maxed Offensive Tactics. I guess they didn't want AI to be better than players so they implemented the trust system that actually does the mechanics and doesn't cruise through everything with slight micro management.

Still it's a waste of fun system and could have been reiterated on.

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I always liked doing Squadrons, even now. I do feel they lost some of there OP when SE changed/revised some of the dungeons' mechanics. I still prefer them over Trust & Duty Support. To bad squadrons don't go past level 60.

I always favored Squadrons over duty support & especially over TRUSTs. Even though squadrons were OP, they did AOEs & would mow down a mob in no time. I tell you the truth, seeing arcanists in the squadron, makes me miss the old summoner (aka DOT Mage), I love Shadow Flare.

I wish they would have updated Squadrons to level 90 in Grand Company & gave them higher rankings. I love collecting the squadron weekly buffs.

The TRUSTs to me are slow, I don't think they do AOEs. It takes like 30+ minutes to go through the dungeons with the Trusts. Can't really do big pulls. Sometimes I feel like SE is punishing/penalizing players for using Trust instead of using the normal human players. Just my opinion.

The Squadrons generally handle fights much better than the Trusts do... While they can stand in AoEs, they don't just stop attacking when a boss mechanic occurs and they will use AoEs when there are multiple enemies instead of just having an AoE as a part of their standard rotation. And even if they do get hit by AoEs, the Squadron healers will actually heal them back up pretty quickly so they very rarely die even if they facetank.

Overall the Squadrons are more responsive and more active than the Trusts are.


But they could definitely use some updates... It makes me sad to see them using skills players no longer have. Bring back Shadow Flare and Flaming Arrow.

There's definitely a lot they could do with the system, they could definitely merge the trust and squadron systems and I'd love to see them finish the Grand Company ranks as well. However, one of my most requested additions would be to have NPCs fill empty party roles so that you could do 2 and 3 players trusts similar to how it was done in Guild Wars. I believe WoW just added this feature as well actually.

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Originally Posted by Latorn

There's definitely a lot they could do with the system, they could definitely merge the trust and squadron systems and I'd love to see them finish the Grand Company ranks as well. However, one of my most requested additions would be to have NPCs fill empty party roles so that you could do 2 and 3 players trusts similar to how it was done in Guild Wars. I believe WoW just added this feature as well actually.

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Yeah if I could have one friend and the rest of the party filled out with Trusts, that would be great. Sitting around waiting for a que to pop makes the multiplayer kinda lame.

Going back to some old interview back before 6.1 YoshiP said “the squadron system will be "replaced and unified" with trusts” or that the squadrons AI will be replaced with trust AI. The ambiguity of the statement or translation from Japanese does not help to understand what he meant here.

Personally, since duty support, trust and squadrons cover the same idea of “run dungeons with NPC”, I'd turn squadrons into special mode where you run the same dungeons but in old school turn-based mode. This way it’d still be a unique mode where we can level our NPC and be distinct from duty support

To bar to entry is a bit high for squadron sadly. A new player can use duty support right away Whereas you need to work your way o 2nd lieutenant to unlock this.
I still run command mission Once in a while. It is fun to have a lala party where l get to pick their glamor

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

Overall the Squadrons are more responsive and more active than the Trusts are.

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Lol. Squadrons are in no way more responsive. They hardly "respond" at all. Their whole design is basically being so overpowered that mechanics don't matter, which is also their weakness, in that they can't/don't really respond to necessary mechanics at all without the player giving orders. Their system is also flawed in that the game doesn't really consider them active combatants, so every single targeted attack is placed on the player instead.

It's absolutely fun and great and satisfying, to be sure. But it lacked the nuance/balance the devs were aiming for. Trusts are much more formulaic and predictable, and achieve the desired goal of all runs taking a calculated approximate amount of time. Which is also why you will never see the oft-suggested "fill empty party slots" idea; adding in even one additional player massively unbalances the estimated run time, and risks effectively killing Duty Finder if it ever happens that 2-3 players + Trust NPC is faster/easier than queuing or running solo.

Man all I want is for trusts to use aoe, lol

FFXIV "Trusts" are complete trash compared to how XI does it, in every conceivable way. Though I suppose they accomplish their amazing goal of offering a very neutered, watered down version of a single player game experience.

Squadron system? Oh yeah... that thing that the devs abandoned a LONG TIME AGO!

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

Not sure how it is now but Squadrons used to be the fastest way to level through most early parts of game once you got their maxed Offensive Tactics. I guess they didn't want AI to be better than players so they implemented the trust system that actually does the mechanics and doesn't cruise through everything with slight micro management.

Still it's a waste of fun system and could have been reiterated on.

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I've been in more than a few groups who took longer to beat than a Trust would. And trusts are designed to be extremely inefficient (read: Barely no AoE to speak of)

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

I've been in more than a few groups who took longer to beat than a Trust would. And trusts are designed to be extremely inefficient (read: Barely no AoE to speak of)

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Trusts may not AoE much but some of the member options feel like they output excessive amounts of single target damage which results in the trash pack shrinking rapidly 1 mob at a time rather than all at once after a small amount of time passes.

Had my own thoughts on this, but searched + found this thread, so I'll stick it in here.

My squadron has been out of work for ages, and I just wish there was an actual reason to use them. The system to glam them was even added in, but since then, not much's happened with them.

Whether being able to slot them in in place of generic trusts (like the grand company members in ARR-level trusts), or using them on the overworld in place of a chocobo companion, it'd be nice to be able to have *something* that wasn't content you spend a few weeks on + then put in the closet forever.

Once upon a time, I think this was brought up and there was a dev response of "we don't want to run into issues where multiple people are running around with the same named follower", but I could see that being dealt with easily enough like how WoW did it with bodyguards, where for example if you were running around with Khorchi, other players would see her show up as "Au Ra Pugilist" or something.

I dunno, there's a decent amount of side systems that let you glam NPCs (namely this + crafter/gatherer turn-ins), but it just seems like a chunk of wasted potential when they're all NPCs you don't see much of.

I just dream of an MMO that lets me glam up/customize a full JRPG party, that isn't just alts I choose between at a title screen or something (like lost ark, or wow's new warband system). I know FF14 won't be that, but I can dream of a little something.

Garrisons are one of the few things that I wish they would copy and improve upon from WoW. Maybe having 3-4 squadron members act as "bodyguards" would be cool too.