Trust NPC Companion system from FFXI, can we get it here?

[Skivvy]

I'd rather not see them as they would just be another reason for people in this game to not actually put in effort towards their main jobs or socialize with others to get things done.

"Oh, it's alright! I don't have to play well! The NPC's will take care of me or won't care!"

I really don't want that to be XIV's next future and used as an excuse as to why someone can't do a dungeon properly.

These were my thoughts as well.

With XI, I've been on both ends of the game. I played for 4+ years in its heyday, pre-trusts. I've also started a new character in the last few years, and have leveled half the jobs to max, and had been gearing up a couple - all with the help of trusts.

As much as I love the trust system in XI, you have to keep in mind that it was an absolute necessity to help keep the game going. Most players are at end-game levels. Leveling in parties is dead, finding help for a lot of the old content is near non-existent, and the player base is just smaller than it used to be. Trusts have filled the role of the diminishing party members, and they make a decent stand-in.

With that said, with my newest character, I very much felt ill-equipped for end-game on my trust-leveled jobs (all of them. lol). I used to love WHM in XI back in the day, and I was quite good at it. But going back with that new character, I didn't end up doing much once I actually hit end-game because I felt so incredibly unprepared. As Sigma-Astra mentioned, NPCs don't care if you don't use your skills properly, or if you perform at a half-assed level. Leveling with trusts lets you get away with very sloppy play, and you still progress.

Now, obviously results will vary with the trust system. Perhaps there are some people who treat it like a formal party of old, and do everything as they should, but I imagine a good chunk of the ones leveling with this system put on a video or movie on the side and mindlessly gain XP. I'm one of those people that will not join a group if I feel I feel like I'll drag them down. Not everyone (as XIV proves) thinks like this, and so I think there would be a good amount of people entering into end-game who don't know how to play their jobs.

[Sigma-Astra]

These were my thoughts as well.

With XI, I've been on both ends of the game. I played for 4+ years in its heyday, pre-trusts. I've also started a new character in the last few years, and have leveled half the jobs to max, and had been gearing up a couple - all with the help of trusts.

As much as I love the trust system in XI, you have to keep in mind that it was an absolute necessity to help keep the game going. Most players are at end-game levels. Leveling in parties is dead, finding help for a lot of the old content is near non-existent, and the player base is just smaller than it used to be. Trusts have filled the role of the diminishing party members, and they make a decent stand-in.

With that said, with my newest character, I very much felt ill-equipped for end-game on my trust-leveled jobs (all of them. lol). I used to love WHM in XI back in the day, and I was quite good at it. But going back with that new character, I didn't end up doing much once I actually hit end-game because I felt so incredibly unprepared. As Sigma-Astra mentioned, NPCs don't care if you don't use your skills properly, or if you perform at a half-assed level. Leveling with trusts lets you get away with very sloppy play, and you still progress.

Now, obviously results will vary with the trust system. Perhaps there are some people who treat it like a formal party of old, and do everything as they should, but I imagine a good chunk of the ones leveling with this system put on a video or movie on the side and mindlessly gain XP. I'm one of those people that will not join a group if I feel I feel like I'll drag them down. Not everyone (as XIV proves) thinks like this, and so I think there would be a good amount of people entering into end-game who don't know how to play their jobs.

You've pretty much gone into detail of my own thoughts at well. I remember playing vanilla Guild Wars and we had a trust system in that game as well and while some of the NPC's were useful...you still really couldn't get anywhere with them that actually needed a full party of competent players.

However, that being said, the trusts systems made it harder to find an active Guild or socialize with people because the moment that you tried, they would just point you in the direction of the NPC's and say that they themselves were busy.

For a game that banks on one being incredibly socially active, I feel as if the trusts system would go against that aspect entirely and just make people even more reclusive, treating this like a solo-RPG when it is very much not.

If I recall correctly, in XI you had to have good social and grouping skills in order to get anything worth of value, so why shouldn't we carry over those values and keep them in XIV rather than rely on an AI that barely knows you exist and couldn't care less if you logged in the next day or not.

It's ridiculous to deny the entire world a useful tool because a handful of idiots will misuse it.

A lot of us say that about parsers, but yet the player base is still split on it out of fear that people might actually know they're not doing what they're suppose to be doing. Not to mention, that a few bad apples misusing it somehow turns it into this unspeakable act of evil. /shrugs

[Gemina]

If I recall correctly, in XI you had to have good social and grouping skills in order to get anything worth of value, so why shouldn't we carry over those values and keep them in XIV rather than rely on an AI that barely knows you exist and couldn't care less if you logged in the next day or not.

Different game, different era. Back in the early days of XI, social anxiety, triggers, and sensitivity still existed but were nowhere near as prevalent as they are today. Also, these 'socializations' within FFXI were mainly circumventions to tackle upcoming content. While this was and IS awesome, it was also during a time prior to the flux of youtubers and other online provisions to get through areas in the game.

Another reason for FFXI socializations was downtime, which FFXIV went to a lot of lengths to eliminate. By downtime, I mean anything during grouping that forces players to break away from engaging enemies. In FFXI, this took form of waiting for players to fill the gaps in PvE, resting between pulls, camping, discussing strategies, among other things. We still kind of deal with these things such as waiting for a replacement during an instance, but even then it is unorthodox for socializations to take place during dungeon runs as most will just stand in silence while waiting.

The way I see things, it seems to me that it is not really the structure of the game that is making social interactions occur less and less; it's us. Lack of socialization isn't happening in just the game, it is also increasing exponentially in the real world, and I think it transfers into the social habits of our gamers. There are literally tons of ways for players to be social in this game, and we choose not to do it. I feel it shouldn't be forced through content, and we should just be more open to it on our own.