The Trust system will always remain a failure and garbage to me

[Ammokkx]

The only issue I have with Trusts are that they should LEVEL WITH YOU, not independently. I cannot stand to run some of those dungeons over and over and over and even then only those NPCs who were with you leveled. If you want everyone leveled up...here you go again. I just cannot take it.

If you take in a class that's the same level, Trusts actually level faster than you even if you have +118% XP going.

I'm always about 8% of a level short.

[Packetdancer]

I like the trusts, even if I only use them myself for one reason: they make me care more about the Scions.

Up to ShB, it felt like here's this group who are supposed to be "at my side", and yet every time I have to deal with something they suddenly are indisposed. Oh, they need to go do a thing over there at the same time, sorry... just find some random other adventurers to accompany you!

I went through ShB doing each first run of a dungeon with the trust (that one time you don't have to level them to do it), just to see their various reactions and interactions. And by the end of ShB, it felt more like they really, genuinely were at my side through the adventure in a way that it had not in previous expansions. And things like Alisaie's reaction to the second boss of Holminster Switch (and Alphinaud's reaction to Alisaie)... they were little touches, but they added to the story and to my view of the characters, fleshing them out.

And then I just go back to doing DF runs, because I have come to enjoy the social aspects of the game. (And also leveling the trust so that I could run the dungeon with them again is kind of painfully slow for the minimal payoff.)

But I also remember a much-lower-level me who was nervous as heck about running dungeons for the first time, and let it stall her out on advancing the questlines. (And then I leveled up and got over it somewhere in late Heavensward content.) And I think trusts could also be a benefit there, because—story elements and interactions aside—they will let someone who is nervous about doing their very first run with other people feel out the dungeon in a 'safe' manner, where they don't have to worry about other players being impatient with them or whatnot.

And honestly, given how often people argue about playstyle on this forum—pull big, pull small, should folks fetch extra mobs if the tank is slow, or let the tank determine the pace regardless, etc.—I'm a little surprised more people aren't in favor of an option that lets dungeon runs go more smoothly by letting someone who wants to be really cautious on their first run have the option to do so outside of Duty Finder.

[Brill_]

Leveling trusts is a breeze and non-issue. Just go as DPS, let them do everything sans bosses, and watch movies/series/cartoons/play your PS4/5/Xbox/Switch.
Zero effort, pretty much.

If you need to watch netflix or play another game to make leveling trusts bearable, then that is a design failure in the content. That means it's boring and not engaging.

Trusts should level with your character like they do in FFXI. We already level all combat classes, crafters and gatherers. Then we have to level again in PotD, HoH, Eureka, and Bozja. I don't know what Yoshi P obsession is with having us level stuff.

[Johaandr]

i only run trust for immersive role playing.

[SturmChurro]

I agree that Trusts are bad, and I don't like them as a concept. As this thread demonstrates, many people use them to essentially not play the game while being handed the EXP, even if it's very slowly. They also denigrate social interaction in a game where social interaction needs all the help it can get.

The benefits of Trusts are literally to take a dungeon at your own pace. That's it. The queue argument doesn't hold much water, because if you have a long queue, that is time where you can do other things like gather, craft, make gil, daily hunts, follow a hunt shell etc. Trusts only real advantage is that they eliminate you needing other people to come with you into the dungeons for which they are available.

It also saddens me to know that my Trust's performance suffers from my performance being good. I've used them before on my Let's Play alt, and I totally understand why people like them, but to me they really do seem more like automatons than the characters they represent. They're programmed to dodge a single AOE, and then to stand still, even if they're a caster or ranged. This means if they get targeted by multiple AOEs, that they obey their dodge subroutine first, which does cause them to fail more intricate mechanics. This means that for every dungeon that's made with Trusts in mind, that Square has to take more time programming the Trusts to act out a certain set of movement in order to actually do new mechanics, which means it's less time they actually spend making the dungeon good for real people.

Yes! I forgot about this issue! I don't think the benefits (I can't think of any - other than afk leveling) are good enough to justify them. Things like this will only lead to the further dilution of this game, and it's content.

[Gemina]

I don't really have an issue with the system, but I also don't use it. I will use it for the initial run of a new dungeon when they are allowed to sync up if under-leveled. In this case, the slow kill time isn't that big of an issue. I enjoy being able to learn the mechanics on my own as well.

The positives end there. After the time I put into squadrons, I was not going to invest any more time into progressing NPCs, even in this extremely simplified system. There might be a chance that I use it to level alt jobs. I don't really see myself going into Bozja to level, and I don't have a problem doing things the old fashioned way and sit in a queue even as DPS for the highest dungeon I can run.

[Mansion]

I don't get the slow leveling of Trusts. I got all my jobs at 80 (starting from 70) around 5.2 so a bit less than a year after 5.0. I tried to use them to level my tanks and my DPS, but as of today I stand with Trusts staying around level 74-75. I just outleveled them so fast because the game just offers so much options to make XP (Roulettes, daily hunts and Pixie quests, a few FATEs here and there). I didn't have enough of 4 tanks and 6-7 DPS to level them up. And trying to level a healer there means you leave out Urianger and Alphinaud, which is a bit annoying.

I get the slower-paced mindset, because the Trust system means free loot (I got the Holminster, Dohn Meg and Qitari minions that way), and it being a MMO I understand they want that usual grouping with players to be the most efficient way. The imabalance is just a bit too harsh in my opinion. As said above, if I need to watch Netflix to make it bearable, then it's a design failure.

The trust being an option in the MSQ is fine for me, bu tI hope it doesn't eat too much dev resources that could be allocaed to something more useful or interesting.

[ReynTime]

I don't get the slow leveling of Trusts. I got all my jobs at 80 (starting from 70) around 5.2 so a bit less than a year after 5.0. I tried to use them to level my tanks and my DPS, but as of today I stand with Trusts staying around level 74-75. I just outleveled them so fast because the game just offers so much options to make XP (Roulettes, daily hunts and Pixie quests, a few FATEs here and there). I didn't have enough of 4 tanks and 6-7 DPS to level them up. And trying to level a healer there means you leave out Urianger and Alphinaud, which is a bit annoying.

I get the slower-paced mindset, because the Trust system means free loot (I got the Holminster, Dohn Meg and Qitari minions that way), and it being a MMO I understand they want that usual grouping with players to be the most efficient way. The imabalance is just a bit too harsh in my opinion. As said above, if I need to watch Netflix to make it bearable, then it's a design failure.

The trust being an option in the MSQ is fine for me, bu tI hope it doesn't eat too much dev resources that could be allocaed to something more useful or interesting.

I'm surprised that was the case. I maxed my trusts by leveling DPSs from 71 to 80 using them and I still had DPS jobs not yet maxed by then.

[Payadopa]

The average DF run may as well be AI because beyond the initial "o/" there's very little communication if any at all. I use DF over Trusts specifically because it's faster not because I'm particularly interested in having a chat in between pulls.

That's an entirely different conversation to have. Nobody is forcing anyone to type but it should definitely be encouraged. Something XIV doesn't do enough. The game pretty much trains you to not talk for the first 50+ levels since you don't need to strategise. That's just not good design for an MMO.

I'm not the biggest fan of wall to wall pulls but we do them since dungeons are just boring. But instead of giving us meaningful encounters SE erected walls to hinder progress artificially. Again, bad design.

And talking about boredom, what about solo instances and their difficulty? Normal is already easy and then we have easy and ... very easy? And the community is surprised we have such a skill gap? Or that jobs get dumbed down? I really like what they did in SB instance-wise where you get taught through gameplay, but it's too little too late I'd say.

But, to bring it back to trusts, I think it sends the wrong message to players in a world were DF exists. By all means, keep it if you have to but how about you give the other side of the coin something too outside of savage?
Would be a nice compromise, wouldn't it?

[Payadopa]

You're not wrong. I mean, sure the game forces players to play together for instances trusts can't cover, but it's such a passive experience where 99% of the time people will only communicate to say "hello" and "tyfp", specially at later levels, that even most instances feel lonely. The only time it feels like a real multiplayer experience is when doing hardcore content, and that's something only like... 5% of the active playerbase does anyway?
The game practically shapes the players' mindset that they should expect minimal interaction with the way the overworld is designed and the whole "game for people with no time" philosophy it goes with. It might be too late to question the "MMO"-ness of it. It honestly doesn't feel that much more MMO-like than a game like Xenoblade X at this point.

That's pretty much where I'm coming from. I'd like to see more social interaction outside of... housing and AFKing in Limsa. haha