A thread to gush about the Trust system

[Omedon]

Best and only good solution in MMOs? Options. If people prefer not to deal with other people they should have the ability to choose so. They just need to expand trust to all story dungeons. Obviously this should also work in the way that you should be able to choose how many bots you want with you so you can play with your friends if you want.

If giving people options makes it so nobody "teams up" anymore, it was just a facade from the beginning. What i'm saying is that they never were any more or less social. People who want to socialize, socialize. People who don't want to, won't. Simple as that. It's just not done out of necessity to progress anymore.

Pretty much this, yeah. Well said!

“Oooh you get to play with reeeaaal peeeoople from aaaaall over the woooorld” isn’t really a sales pitch any more. That’s like saying “I’m gonna blow your mind, but this car has POWER WINDOWS” in 2021. The novelty of online gaming purely as a wondrous feature is pretty much dead. MMORPGs should always, absolutely maintain their place as having options for friends to play together, and even for meeting new ones, but any game asking for especially a recurring fee should also strive to give something to each customer, one at a time, whether interfacing with the community or not.

After all, one pays Squeenix, not the community. It’s wonderful that Squeenix therefore provides a dungeon party of their own casting!

[Jirah]

Never liked it never used it, it made the dungeons more lax and made them fewer cuz all dungeons from now on just be tied to our party members. It makes no sense to have solo opportunities for a mmo in most cases but in dungeons it skews away ques. But people always forget you can use party finder, your FC pals your friend lists, or just shout. These things eliminate the opportunity for socializing and if you don’t play MMOs for multiplayer your in the wrong genre

[Omedon]

It makes no sense to have solo opportunities for a mmo in most cases but in dungeons it skews away ques. But people always forget you can use party finder, your FC pals your friend lists, or just shout. These things eliminate the opportunity for socializing and if you don’t play MMOs for multiplayer your in the wrong genre

See, I see things like this and what I actually read between the lines is "you should need my help to get any further," especially in a game with mandatory dungeons.

With all due respect, this is gatekeeping of the highest order, and I thought the FFXIV community was supposed to be above that.

[VictorTheed]

I want the trusts to be able to be used in open world stuff like fates or maps.

I would also like the trusts to be able to work were it's me and a friend and we can fill the 2 missing roles with trusts, don't care whose trust gets the exp.

[Omedon]

I would also like the trusts to be able to work were it's me and a friend and we can fill the 2 missing roles with trusts, don't care whose trust gets the exp.

Definitely the one missing link to trusts' best form!

In WoW, one of their new core features scales to group size. My best friend and I love it there! She doesn't play FFXIV but if she did we'd definitely feel the "all or nothing" limitation of trusts! With the individual programming they've put into each character's AI, it seems like it would be easy to just scale how many trusts you bring!

[Warlyx]

only bad thing: having to level trusts ugh , low dps but i guess thats "ok"

good thing : everything else

[Shougun]

I think the idea is really good on many levels, though I can see the reason why some people would be skeptical of the system - from their perspective it makes sense, and I'm sure it has some harm on the potential to their preferred desires (if you forced everyone to use PF instead of DF for example, just remove DF, some players would think that was great.. - though I think it's clear that FFXIV is not even vaguely trying to be that type of game), at least from my point I think "trusts are a good idea, make it better if you can". There is this strange to some (I see a number of players have a hard time understanding the concept of playing a multiplayer, potential, game but not feeling the need to always be in multiplayer state of mind, and with a sense that you can make substantial achievement still), and I think quite sizeable, group of players that I've spectated that sort of take things on in their own pace, with the lucky group around them, DF, or alone if that's not available (where the advent of DF like systems are so popular they're not really optional for an mmo anymore), the people who often get absolutely ruined out of content that is small knit group only or FOTM based (flavor of the month, blue mage was very much that way, but they've made changes so it's not as much that now, though I think there could be a couple more tweaks to make it more enjoyable outside of FOTM). Also a decent portion, I think, are people who are nervous and just need a moment - especially I imagine for certain jobs like tank or healer, it's a nice opportunity to test yourself before opting for public shame lol. For DD it means not having to put your whole game on halt because something is dead or the opposite hyper popular lol (1 hour queue times). Then there is the story element which I'm not sure as many, but I think it would grow given the system exists and if they expand it backwards especially - that would then join FFXIV as if it was an sRPG (as much of the MSQ could then be approached like that).

I feel there should be some tweaks to how they 'level', as I don't feel it's the best for a few reasons (I think perhaps they scale to the content but you can merit them or something), and they might have some opportunities to give them a more bioware companion treatment (and or create a custom one like what we had in 1.0, which could also dodge any sort of romantic issues if they wanted to offer that but not make the lore weird).

I would like to see squadrons, companions, trusts, and retainers have a throughline or greater division though (squadrons for example seem like they were tossed away and their system cannibalized for trusts, open to whatever, but hopefully systems get the twists and turns they need to feel either unified or distinct and not left for dead).

[Payadopa]

I'd rather have more opportunities to team up with other players rather than less. I already have ample opportunity to 'go at it solo style' in the form of...numerous single player games.

I think it's a real shame that MMO's have become far less social experiences over time.

MMOs should not discourage party play. At least Trusts are way slower than normal parties but it's a worrying trend. There is over a dozen FFs out there who can be enjoyed solo.

[Payadopa]

See, I see things like this and what I actually read between the lines is "you should need my help to get any further," especially in a game with mandatory dungeons.

With all due respect, this is gatekeeping of the highest order, and I thought the FFXIV community was supposed to be above that.

That's like saying chess players are gate keeping since it's a game designed to be played by two people. Smh That is Twitter logic.

[TaleraRistain]

For me the current system with Trusts and "normal" dungeon queues has one big, fatal flaw: Its either-or.

I enjoy playing through the story with my partner and that includes (obviously) dungeons. We were kinda looking forward to be able to these dungeons, just the two of us and some AI... and then it turns out that we either have to split up or use good old dutyfinder again. We would have loved to fill the missing slots for healer and second DPS with some of the Trusts, but that wasnt an option.
As a result I never really used Trusts... I tried once and find it to difficult to deal with how slow runs are with them (I'm pretty spoiled with my pocket-BLM, I guess).

So, yeah... maybe Trusts would have more of a place if they would allow for more dynamic groups.

Yeah that's my biggest want with Trusts. I want to do MSQ just me and hubby. He has stopped playing because he's way more casual than I am, gets frustrated very easily, and was tired of the bullshit from others when all he wanted was to get through and enjoy the story. So if we could play together just he and I, I bet he'd come back.

As to the dislike of Trusts because they take away from partying, well, what did you expect SE to do? How many threads do we get on here with people complaining that they have to group with "the bads" and they want SE to gatekeep them out of even being able to do the basic story? It's the same thing that happened with MSQ roulette. People were jerks to new people. SE didn't want to see their game become a barren wasteland, so they did something to counter people being jerks to new people. Now all "the bads" can go do their Trusts in peace and enjoy their story without having to take crap from some random mook who can't handle that they aren't up to their exacting specifications. It's pure fantasy to think SE will do something that will drive people from their game. They want people to play it and make it worth developing, so they're going to take all necessary measures to make it accessible.