[DEV REQUEST] Grand Company Goodies

[Istaru]

...including the ability to recruit and train your own squad to use for something...

I have concerns about this. I know some people basically want them to be fully usable for dungeons to get XP with instead of using DF for many valid reasons.

I hope they do not do this. There is very little social interaction in this game as it is. This would be another nail in that coffin. I know what trusts did to XI. I don't want to see that here. I would like to see them be like our path companions from 1.0 though.

Overall, I am curious as to what is coming for GCs.

[Khalithar]

Snip

I agree with you about not letting them replace players in dungeons. Seeing that happen in SWTOR (where most of the time you're better off kicking someone and bringing in a healer NPC instead) is definitely not in the least bit fun, short explanation: SWTOR changed nearly all of it's dungeons to role neutral like PotD but did not balance the content assuming no healer. As a result if you get a bunch of dps, it's better to kick a player and have one person bring out their strongest healer NPC who could very easily replace a player in that content.

That being said, I also don't want the GC squad to be as meaningless as the chocobo ends up being story wise. We're supposed to be the really powerful WoL whose risen high enough in our faction that they're entrusting the lives of others to our command, so yes, I want there to be interesting quests and group content to do with them. The very last thing I want them to be is another set of retainers or just a chocobo with a palette swap. Even if their personalities end up cliche (the hot headed rookie, scarred grizzled veteran, etc.) I still want them to have a personality of some kind and something that makes them memorable. Maybe I'm too idealistic, but I want a reason to care, I want to be excited to go out and quest with them to see them grow as characters, gain new abilities and armor, and so on and so forth.

[Astyrah]

agree. npcs shouldn't replace players in regular DF and raids, if they allowed them, it would kill duty roulette and what little social interaction we have in dungeons. what they can instead do is that they can allow these npc companions to accompany us if df is set to undersized party or special instances like diadem

[ErikMynhier]

I would like to see you train 2-3 npc units, with the ability to select job type as well as look. And I would like to run solo content with them, but only have that option in special "Grand Company Missions". I would see these as special dungeons that allow you to bring any combinations of humans NPCs (including our chocobos) equaling 4 characters. These would be under their own tab and would maybe drop tokens or something for fun items like minions and such.

I DO NOT want them to replace humans in normal content. But some separate special content like PotD is a special form of content would be nice.

[Alberel]

I have concerns about this. I know some people basically want them to be fully usable for dungeons to get XP with instead of using DF for many valid reasons.

I hope they do not do this. There is very little social interaction in this game as it is. This would be another nail in that coffin. I know what trusts did to XI. I don't want to see that here. I would like to see them be like our path companions from 1.0 though.

Overall, I am curious as to what is coming for GCs.

Given how much they use things like the relic quests and such to force players to rerun old content to keep it lively for lower levels I doubt they would give us something that would remove the need for other players in group content. Knowing this dev team they likely have an entirely unique type of new content for these to be used in. If I were to guess, it may be related to the coming Eorzean Alliance military campaign against either Ala Mhigo or Garlemald.

That said, I do believe this evolved from the desire to take Chocobo companions into dungeons... so who knows.

[Niwashi]

I know some people basically want them to be fully usable for dungeons to get XP with instead of using DF for many valid reasons.
I hope they do not do this. There is very little social interaction in this game as it is. This would be another nail in that coffin.

In most cases, I'd agree with you, except for the fact that Castrum and Praetorium are basically broken. You can't solo them (especially not on-level when you first get to them), but you also can't fully complete them unless you can solo them. If NPC followers who can run dungeons with you enable soloing those two, it would mean people are finally able to run them in their entirety and find out how the hell the 2.0 story ends. Rescuing those two dungeons could be worth ruining DF for everything else.

But I think it would be possible without ruining DF. Make a DF mode that allows these GC NPC companions to go with you, but which gives no XP and no completion rewards except for quest progression. So basically, just like we can already solo low-level content by going unsynced, we could also solo on-level content by filling out the team with NPCs. But for roulette, leveling, or tome farming, it's players only.


But then I'd also like to see other content that's really geared towards these GC squads, like the "Grand Company Missions" Erik mentioned.

[Eul]

What social interaction? Whole of my game time I never speak to japanese on df. Only happen with english ls. So IMO it doesn't impact much to me.

[Brady672]

It'll probably end up as something like the retainer ventures where you can send them to dungeons and they'll bring back drops from chests, mobs, and bosses. I hope it's more than that, but I just have a sinking feeling.

[Axia_Darkrose]

the glamours what the introduced in one of the dev blogs would be awsome if they add those in, and add some form of quest chain for character development ranking up higher into the higher grand company ecshelons, from captain and up, higher you get, slightly harder quests.

[Astyrah]

It'll probably end up as something like the retainer ventures where you can send them to dungeons and they'll bring back drops from chests, mobs, and bosses. I hope it's more than that, but I just have a sinking feeling.

o god i hope not - i atleast want to be able to fight alongside them even if it's just limited content or MSQ/special instances. but given what they did with company airships (ie. glorified retainer ventures) the possibility is there...