The Trust System was prefect, why do we need to level them now?

[Ilyrian]

Hats off to anyone who has the patience for it.

[EaMett]

I leveled them up so that i would always have an on-demand run of any supported dungeon on any class i should choose. For glamour hunting, mini chasing, or even just a khloe run when i dont want to deal with people. I imagine as i continue to level more classes, ill end up re-using a few of those dungeons as needed. And if there are enough people like me, then this feature couldnt possibly have been a waste of dev time. Which leads to the question, how much of the player base does a feature have to appeal to for us to consider it well used dev time? An ultimate fight will have a clear rate of less then 1% of the population, but i wouldnt consider it a waste.

Generally speaking, you'd expect a successful feature to be used by about 5-10% of the player population. Ultimate clears can go up to 3% iirc and I wouldn't be surprised if 5% at least tried it. But even without that, ultimate serves a different purpose, it's a cognitive flow structure. So it would be a decent use of dev time even if only 1% participated in it. Eureka clears were 5% iirc, etc. etc. It's harder to tell which percentage of the population used trusts since there's no public data available. But judging from forum posts it seems like the interest is mostly from people who use it to not engage with other players rather than a tool for faster/easier progression. (And I certainly don't have the 5% representation among the players I know, although that's somewhat anecdotal).
All that to say that it could use some tweaking to make it more useful and more widely adopted. And removing the ridiculous 50-60 dungeon requirement would be a good start.

[Mhaeric]

I used it for all my tanks to get them to 80. Had all the Trusts levelled to 80 after getting 2 of the tanks to 80. I.e. for me I didn't even have to go out of my way to level them since I would have used them for my tanks regardless.

[Frizze]

Ahh, but trusts do serve multiple purposes. People who dont want to run dungeons with other people(bad experience, anxiety, whatever reason)? Check. People who want to go extra slow without pressure from others? Check. People who want to run it on their own to figure out the mechs themselves? Check. People who want to skip a long que? Check. Solo hunting for loots? Check. And on top of that, you get tiny bits of story or character development from the NPC dialogues along the way - so the people who need to see every bit of story and lore have a reason to do them too. On their own, each of those groups is small. But i would bet that they add up to or exceed a generic 5% threshold.

Now im not saying the feature couldnt be improved. If the devs decided to just set the trusts to be equal to your exp(and you set an achievement flag to enable avatar/scenario mode i guess) i wouldnt complain. If youre using them to level, the "50-60" dungeons it takes is also roughly how much exp it takes to bring one tank and one dps class from 71-80(one tank and one dps being enough to level each npc).

[Liam_Harper]

What they could have done is added a grind to unlock extra traits and abilities instead of levels, so you could make your runs faster but you had to earn it first. Similar to Squadrons Offensive or Defensive traits, along with aoe for each character.

There's actually some neat tricks to take note of as well. Like if a fight is taking too long, Urianger will start casting Death on enemies to make sure the dungeon is completed in a (predetermined) timely manner.

This is actually a strange part of Trusts, where they almost encourage you to afk during trash packs. The Trust will adjust their damage too if yours is too low. The system actively punishes you for playing too well and participating.

[Absurdity]

This is actually a strange part of Trusts, where they almost encourage you to afk during trash packs. The Trust will adjust their damage too if yours is too low. The system actively punishes you for playing too well and participating.

My guess is that it's a mechanic to make trusts inefficient, so you continue to engage in normal party content, while also allowing you to actually finish the dungeon in time.


If we were to compare it to your squadron, in Brayflox for example a melee dps squad npc with it's offensive tactics at max deals more dps than any player could at that level and two of them simply melt bosses while also taking significantly less damage than an actual player.

This makes running that dungeon with a maxed out squad more efficient than running it with actual players and SE probably wanted to prevent that from happening with Trusts.

[rxantos]

Lets see. Waiting from 12 minutes all the way to 16 hours for a duty to pop to level up a DPS. Or just using Trust to level up?
I take trust.
Is a pity you cannot use the scions on all duties and not just some.

[Iscah]

Lets see. Waiting from 12 minutes all the way to 16 hours for a duty to pop to level up a DPS. Or just using Trust to level up?
I take trust.
Is a pity you cannot use the scions on all duties and not just some.

No levelling duty should take 16 hours to pop - although as soon as you said that I guessed you're on a Japanese data centre (and having checked: greetings, fellow Typhonite). Have you set your duty finder to include all languages? There's an options button up in the top bar of the menu. It makes a huge difference to queues, especially eight-man content and endgame.

Alternately, you're trying to queue for EX trials or Binding Coil. It's not recommended to do that.

[HP-Office-Inkjet-Pro-6978]

I gotta admit, Squadrons were fun for me for the most part. There were some huge level gaps between available dungeons which was frustrating at times for both leveling myself and my squadron members, but I would let my squadron do squadron missions while I didn't feel like doing command ones to get their levels up and I'd break those level walls soon enough. It's a very nice thing to have as someone who primarily uses POTD for 1-61 leveling and gets burnt out quick.

Trusts, on the other hand, are quite a bit more annoying. Doing more 2+ dungeon runs to level up my squadron isn't anything new and if anything squadrons took more runs. The issue for me lies in how slow each run in SHB dungeons both feel and actually are. I will admit, they feel slower than they actually are, but they are still usually around 40+ minutes a run. The amount of runs I need to do just to level up my party is pretty egregious as its exp payout per run leads me to believe it assumes I will not be doing any leveling from other sources such as roulettes and is tuned accordingly (do note these claims are only from my limited experience with trusts and I'm glad to hear anyone else's experiences). I surpass the level requirement for the next dungeon before my party even levels up once most of the time. It gets even worse when I sometimes have to start the whole grind over when I level a new class like going from DPS to healer, requiring me to level someone who can replace the class I used to use trusts in (I'm willing to bet this can be prevented with you-know-who once you unlock them but alas I forget to use my second braincell most days and I'm sure many have probably forgot to plan ahead like I did).

In summary, leveling trust members can almost never keep up with the pace I and others I know level at causing it to fall far behind wasting what little time I have to play these days if I were to try to level my party. Now that I have Bozja unlocked, I can just go there to level at a nicer pace while getting my relic weapons worked on. I really hope they fix this pacing issue for Trusts because I missed the neat dialogue from all the trust dungeon runs since I always did duty finder, plus sometimes I need a break from Bozja but would still like to level at a good pace.

[KaerisKlyne]

Trusts were fast and easy to level, even when I didn't need to level any of my jobs. I just ran them for fun while listening to podcasts or chatting with friends, and it never felt longer than running with other players. It actively removed the possibility of getting matched with someone who makes runs go slowly, which happens...often in the duty finder if I don't have a full party of friends.