I would think it might be interesting to let these squadrons run on retainer/dungeon missions and they actually do so - what I mean is you can find player's retainers in the real world occasionally, now you might be in a full party and come by Nic Pay's squadron setup camp in the dungeon, perhaps cast some buff spells on you as you walk by lol.

At the point that you get them and at the point they'll be useful is probably quite different though. I mean if you wanted to speed run old content you'd go unsycned, and I imagine you're not going to get them soon enough that you'd be able to level with them at level 65. At this point what I imagine is helping them through the content, which you can then run again later for maybe some bonus, but for the most part they might do something like learn the zone so you can send them on missions for items?

You may be able to use them for the daily level roulette on a lower level job? That might be helpful, ish. So I guess what I'm saying is I think it will take down the amount of players in public only slightly, since I have a hard time imagining that you're going to be like "LOL SQUADRONS IS OUT, GOODBYE STATIC, SAVAGE OMEGA SOLO~!"