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

[Kisshu]

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?".

[Terin]

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?

[Nighthawky2010]

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.

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

[Nighthawky2010]

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.

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.

[Nighthawky2010]

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.

[CaptainLagbeard]

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.

[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.

[LioJen]

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.

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.

[Palin]

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

[Eastwall]

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