Duty Support for all MSQ Trials plz

I watched the live letter and saw that they were going to start adding Duty Support for some of the optional dungeons like Halatali.

While I'm all for this, there are still some major snags in the MSQ that should be resolved first. On a recent playthrough with a new character, I got stuck at Leviathan and Ramuh while waiting in queue. Wait times were in excess of 30minutes for both, with Shiva later on not faring too much better.

Can we please add duty support to the older MSQ trials too? I'm happy that optional dungeons that no one does anymore are receiving the Duty Support treatment, but the roadblocks to progressing through the MSQ should come first.

I wish it supported trials as well. And they did give it a try for some recent trials, but they said it's very difficult to do for trials and they are also torn because they want some big bosses that you have to defeat with players.

I think they will probably do it eventually, but I mean this in a long-term sense ie. we might see it in the next 5 to 10 years. They don't seem to be planning it for 7.x, but they might in 8.x, 9.x or 10.x which is what takes us up to around 10 years potentially.

I think they've mentioned they did want to look at trials eventually but those are little more complicated and may take some additional thought and preparation and testing.

Definitely agree they need to make sure it's in the plan somewhere.

I hope so. Its a slog for new players that could definitely be off-putting. Especially in the case of A realm Reborn, where players are just starting out. Waiting for 30+ minutes is major turn off for your game, I worry some might just say 'screw it' and quit playing.

From what I heard when they were asked about lvl 89 trial in EW, they said they would consider it but final trials have to be 8 man people no exceptions. So in this case, Thordan, Shinryu, Hades, and the other 2 are out of the question for now we should say.

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

From what I heard when they were asked about lvl 89 trial in EW, they said they would consider it but final trials have to be 8 man people no exceptions. So in this case, Thordan, Shinryu, Hades, and the other 2 are out of the question for now we should say.

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There are already 8-man duty support versions of The Mothercrystal, Worqor Lar Dor, and Everkeep, so Im confident they can redo the old 8-man MSQ trials of the past regardless of whether they are a final fight or not. As others have mentioned, it is likely gonna take some time though. I just figured they would prioritize those over optional dungeons such as Halatali...
Even if they choose to keep final fights out of the equation, there are many trials that would still benefit from Duty Support to ease the burden of progressing the MSQ.

Leviathan, Moggle Mog, Ramuh, Ravana, Bismark, Susano, Lakshmi, Tsukuyomi, Titania, Innocence... to name a few.

Anything that eases the bottlenecks to MSQ progression would be a boon.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

There are already 8-man duty support versions of The Mothercrystal, Worqor Lar Dor, and Everkeep, so Im confident they can redo the old 8-man MSQ trials of the past regardless of whether they are a final fight or not. As others have mentioned, it is likely gonna take some time though. I just figured they would prioritize those over optional dungeons such as Halatali...
Even if they choose to keep final fights out of the equation, there are many trials that would still benefit from Duty Support to ease the burden of progressing the MSQ.

Leviathan, Moggle Mog, Ramuh, Ravana, Bismark, Susano, Lakshmi, Tsukuyomi, Titania, Innocence... to name a few.

Anything that eases the bottlenecks to MSQ progression would be a boon.

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While not impossible, the specifics surrounding those 3 trials are unique in that narratively the scions are right there for the encounter and they were written to be there with the creation of DT's MSQ.
Retroactively though for older trials, if they were to continue current course, they would have to redo narrative design in the older MSQ to make people available to participate in the trials. Now they could rewrite certain scenes to include some characters but I don't foresee that much variance.

If they abandon the narrative component though, technically they could also just throw in "random soldier A-G". Not impossible but they have to either abandon their precedent when it comes to duty support in trials or rewrite a good amount of MSQ to inject enough characters into certain scenes pre-trial fights. I imagine this is their current predicament.

I'd much prefer the MSQ Trials be prioritized over the optional dungeons

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

If they abandon the narrative component though, technically they could also just throw in "random soldier A-G". Not impossible but they have to either abandon their precedent when it comes to duty support in trials or rewrite a good amount of MSQ to inject enough characters into certain scenes pre-trial fights. I imagine this is their current predicament.

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They do that for ARR dungeons though. The four nameless eager adventurers you can run Sastasha with are your party members all the way through Keeper of the Lake, including the Ultima Weapon fight. Certain HW/SB dungeons also include nameless Knights, Doman soldiers, and Resistance fighters.

Yeah I've run into problems levelling alts when I got to HW and SB trials that took hours of trying over multiple days until I was finally able to get them done. So they really need to give us a duty support option. I don't care how much they think the trials in general or end trials should be special, if so few people are doing them that someone just trying to get through the msq has to stop and wait for ages just to even get it to pop it needs an alternative option.

And as mentioned, the current duty support dungeons give you nameless NPCs in early expansions so there is no reason why they can't give us more nameless NPCs or nameless adventurers for all the trials. I do understand doing side dungeons for things like unlocking grand company levels or some aether currents, but really trials seem like they should be the more pressing concern.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

While not impossible, the specifics surrounding those 3 trials are unique in that narratively the scions are right there for the encounter and they were written to be there with the creation of DT's MSQ.
Retroactively though for older trials, if they were to continue current course, they would have to redo narrative design in the older MSQ to make people available to participate in the trials. Now they could rewrite certain scenes to include some characters but I don't foresee that much variance.

If they abandon the narrative component though, technically they could also just throw in "random soldier A-G". Not impossible but they have to either abandon their precedent when it comes to duty support in trials or rewrite a good amount of MSQ to inject enough characters into certain scenes pre-trial fights. I imagine this is their current predicament.

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They already abandoned precedent by giving us random GC peeps for ARR duty support and even more random fill ins in the MSQ duty support up to ShB. And especially for the new trials we have a very easy narrative out, we already do summon random people to help us with the fights, no narrative reason for those to be players but not NPCs.
And even for older trials the common thing if the MSQ even does a call back on there being other people with you instead of just you apparently going at it solo with 7 people that aren't there, is "get you adventurer friends", once again no narrative reason those have to be other players (who are rarely my friends), instead of NPCs (like I watched that thaumaturge grow from a newbie wondering which spell to cast to a confident competent caster, I'd take her to Shiva any day).

And the cap trials should feel special because they are special not because you are blocked from progressing to the end by the duty wait times and people dropping out (like what happened for my DT finishing trial.)

I'm all for it - as long as they stop removing mechanics because the trusts can't handle them.

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Originally Posted by Vrahjin

I'm all for it - as long as they stop removing mechanics because the trusts can't handle them.

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For the ARR and HW trials, though, does this really even matter? They all die too quickly with full parties for the mechanics to have any bite to them anyway.

If making them Trustable would give them level sync similar to Ultima Weapon, that would be all-around better anyway.

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Originally Posted by Ilisidi

(like I watched that thaumaturge grow from a newbie wondering which spell to cast to a confident competent caster, I'd take her to Shiva any day)

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I loved watching our Duty Support NPCS grow and become confident in their abilities through the levels.

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Originally Posted by Vrahjin

I'm all for it - as long as they stop removing mechanics because the trusts can't handle them.

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Some of that may be adjustments for the AI but some I think are also just that many early mechanics had very obscure tells and were very unlike content we see now. Yoshi-P even mentioned that briefly in the last Live Letter, how Halatali doesn't look much like dungeons currently. A lot of things I noticed they changed were implementing mechanic triggers we see constantly much later that this earlier content was missing so sprouts would recognize those triggers in more current content. I don't think it's all for the AI. Some of it is just standardization.

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Originally Posted by Sacae

For the ARR and HW trials, though, does this really even matter? They all die too quickly with full parties for the mechanics to have any bite to them anyway.

If making them Trustable would give them level sync similar to Ultima Weapon, that would be all-around better anyway.

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Eh, fair point. Still feel sorry for Thordan, SE should've done some kind of (harder) ilevel sync years ago.
While on that subject, they also should've made it so you can't go in without job stones past Haukke. At least not while using DF, feel free to keep it in if you're in a full premade.
Sorry for the tangent, had a Thaumaturge in Alliance Roulette yesterday :)

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

I loved watching our Duty Support NPCS grow and become confident in their abilities through the levels.

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Some of that may be adjustments for the AI but some I think are also just that many early mechanics had very obscure tells and were very unlike content we see now. Yoshi-P even mentioned that briefly in the last Live Letter, how Halatali doesn't look much like dungeons currently. A lot of things I noticed they changed were implementing mechanic triggers we see constantly much later that this earlier content was missing so sprouts would recognize those triggers in more current content. I don't think it's all for the AI. Some of it is just standardization.

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Could be, could just be me being a slighty grumpy fellow who felt the early dungeons were streamlined too much.

Some kind of personal touch on the duty personnel would be nice. Being able to name them (within reason), have them chatter, grow, feel defeated if they get downed/there's a wipe, exultant over learning new skills. Embrace the full RP side of it.
I loved the personal takes the scions had in ShB and up - and Ktisis was just a hoot to run through with trust - they should have the nameless trusts in the early levels more like that.

Unless they already are? Haven't used them so I might just be spouting nonsense out of my rear.

I'll add my voice for "Please make them doable with NPCs". I like to level alts or sometimes just NG+, and been on different data centres, and some fights are always a roadblock, sometimes of several hours. Sometimes you're in the zone, you're invested in the plot, and you want to proceed to the trial right now, and instead you're sitting there in the queue, start to do other stuff while it runs, get less and less invested, momentum completely gone. Some nights I wanted to finish an expansion the same evening and had to debate with myself whether to stick it out and hope for a group or log out and postpone it to the next day, and that's just so unsatisfying.
And that definitely includes the late trials of each segment (be it ARR or the expansions). I don't care either if it's supposed to be special, I want to finish the chapter. And they get less special with every hour you spend hanging up laundry or watching netflix while the queue runs.

And lore-wise, they can make that work. We've got our crystal, and I think we can also be trusted to understand the difference between gameplay necessity and story details. If our WOL is in trouble, Eager Marauder (or Warrior I guess) is there. It's fine.

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Originally Posted by Vrahjin

Some kind of personal touch on the duty personnel would be nice. Being able to name them (within reason), have them chatter, grow, feel defeated if they get downed/there's a wipe, exultant over learning new skills. Embrace the full RP side of it.
I loved the personal takes the scions had in ShB and up - and Ktisis was just a hoot to run through with trust - they should have the nameless trusts in the early levels more like that.

Unless they already are? Haven't used them so I might just be spouting nonsense out of my rear.

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You can't name them but they already do that. I'd suggest giving things a try maybe on a lower level alt so you can get the full experience. I ran new Duty Support on a new Dynamis character. They go from nervous and uncertain newbies to companions confident in their abilities.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

You can't name them but they already do that. I'd suggest giving things a try maybe on a lower level alt so you can get the full experience. I ran new Duty Support on a new Dynamis character. They go from nervous and uncertain newbies to companions confident in their abilities.

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I love their verbal interactions. I wish all the trust npc's had more frequent little dialogues that show off their uniqueness.