Trust system for Trials

[Deveryn]

Many people, including me, play FF14 for the story. We are immersed in the world of Eorzea and this world serves as a respite from the stressful lives that we lead in the real world. Yet the toxicity, homophobia, ableism, and elitism from the real world also seeps into Eorzea, which is why I and many others have much welcomed the Trust system in order for us to do content without being encumbered by the toxic sludge that a minority of this game's community brings with them into Duty Finder. Yet, minority or no, a bad apple will spoil the whole batch, and it is for this reason that whenever I need to queue for a trial during the main story I am anxious, scared, not knowing whether I'll run into a toxic asshole or not.

Please, Square Enix, implement the Trust system for trials. Many of us do not want to interact with other players for fear of our safety and mental well-being. We simply wish to play the story and immerse ourselves in the world, not deal with toxic elitists.

What you think of as toxic elitism is more likely people that have been burned by sneaky newbs acting like they know the fight wasting their time. Having been through all of the content many times over, it shouldn't fall on me or anyone to immediately decipher all your wants and needs with barely any time at all. Why is it such a problem for people to ask questions about a fight or open up a party finder for a particular trial if you want to run it blind or whatever? Why is it such a problem to do a little bit of research. This is a social game and you pretty much have to learn how to play with others. SE is already on a tight enough schedule as it is trying to please as many people as possible. What you're asking for would take away valuable time from all the rest of the game. If you want a single player trial, please play another FF.

[Rowde]

Doesn't this demean the whole concept of playing an MMO though?
Why not just ask that FF14 has a converted single-player mode.
If the potential of having a bad experience during an online interaction is a major concern, then you probably shouldn't play an online-based game.

Since Trusts already EXIST and are confirmed being carried into EW, it kinda makes this whole talking point completely moot. Now it seems weird that you can play a majority of the MSQ single player except for the handful of Trials within an expansion.

And to be clear, I stated it somewhere in this thread already, I only advocate for this idea if it's restricted to normal mode MSQ Trials. I don't think you should be able to run optional Trials, Extreme Trials, and 8player normal/savage raids with Trusts. That is absolutely the content you go and figure out how to tackle with other players.

[Poporito_Popoto]

Doesn't this demean the whole concept of playing an MMO though?
Why not just ask that FF14 has a converted single-player mode.
If the potential of having a bad experience during an online interaction is a major concern, then you probably shouldn't play an online-based game.

And if you don't like how this MMO handles it, there are others that will meet your needs.

[Wissp]

I simply don't think this is true when looking at Normal Mode ShB Story Trials.
The Dancing Plague, The Crown of the Immaculate, The Dying Gasp and the Seat of Sacrifice are already super light in mechanics.

SoS super light in mechanics? Um......not from what I've seen. If so, please tell me which trials, other than Thordan, are heavier on mechanics than SoS.

Seat of Sacrifice is quite hard for new people to do with people who have never done it dying all the time to various mechanics.

And as to the request for solo trials, I mean why not have a very watered down version for those that want to solo. As people have said, Memoria is a good example of it done.

The issues I can see with it though are development resource time and the fact it may make the normal trials hard to queue for if many choose to go the solo route instead.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Just keep the trials tuned for actual players and let ppl like the OP attempt to clear them using AI trusts that will faceplant repeatedly due to mechanics they cannot process correctly so they can keep doing it over and over when the duty times out. Do not over tune the trusts either, and just keep their stats in line with a player at min ilvl for the trial.

[Shougun]

Honestly yes, but I think there might be some system that encourages some investment to use them. I know technically that is what the leveling system does.. I just don't love the difference from squadron to trust (squadron when empowered are way stronger), and feel there could be some more exciting ways to develop them as characters given they are full blown actual characters. But yeah that would be really cool. Just ensure that they're not so immediately available and so immediately strong that they wipe out trial DF all together (but I wouldn't mind if given a decent amount of investment you could get them completed at a decent pace). One suggest I had used previously for blue mage if they wanted to allow solo alliance or insane ideas like that was using a special item purchased via timed currencies like beast tribe tokens, the idea was like you get an incense and burn it to go super sayian blue mage. Well I suppose you could have a like system too, some sort of temporary echo essence that you crush and imbues your party with a unique rare temporary variant of echo found in nature or something.

Early on with FFXIV I played it multiplayer first with "it's nice that it's a FF game", at this point given work, and honestly other cool games to play too (FFXIV is cool, just I've a huge backlog staring at me.. own more cool games than I've time lol)... I play FFXIV as FF game first and foremost. I don't want to see the multiplayer part hobbled greatly but I do like the idea of encouraging that as an option, and particularly if you had to invest a bit first. Like Squadrons kind of suck in the beginning but if you get them all the right job and the max offensive tactic... they're pretty good. I'd like to see trusts have that, getting them max level is kind of meh feeling which is why I'm not in love with that progression concept and lean more towards merit systems (which could still require a lot of investment! I'm not trying to cut down that idea, just.. want them to actually get empowered and perhaps even personalized like a sort of bioware companion). I don't think squadrons killed the DF, and they were pretty useful for leveling at a respectable rate, but it would be quite unfortunate to make a system that did wack DF so hard that it became a solo only game.

[KroxMcKrumble]

Since Trusts already EXIST and are confirmed being carried into EW, it kinda makes this whole talking point completely moot. Now it seems weird that you can play a majority of the MSQ single player except for the handful of Trials within an expansion.

And to be clear, I stated it somewhere in this thread already, I only advocate for this idea if it's restricted to normal mode MSQ Trials. I don't think you should be able to run optional Trials, Extreme Trials, and 8player normal/savage raids with Trusts. That is absolutely the content you go and figure out how to tackle with other players.

There is a difference between running a dungeon with 3 computers and running a trial with 7. Where are we doing that?

And if you don't like how this MMO handles it, there are others that will meet your needs.

Who said I didn't like how this MMO handles things? As it stands right now, it doesn't do the thing being asked, and I have no problem with that.

[Poporito_Popoto]

Just keep the trials tuned for actual players and let ppl like the OP attempt to clear them using AI trusts that will faceplant repeatedly due to mechanics they cannot process correctly so they can keep doing it over and over when the duty times out. Do not over tune the trusts either, and just keep their stats in line with a player at min ilvl for the trial.

That's often not any different with a player behind the wheel.

[kiagenwa]

It makes more sense for the party of the scions to do trials with us as opposed to...random people who just happen to be there. That is unless we use Azem summoning magic against the Magus Sisters and Anima.

It's not random people. They were adventurers making a living.
I believe WoL and their merry band of adventurers were hired (albeit cheaply) to clear dungeon/trial/raid.

In the story we're told to gather people. It's not like they were conveniently there. The WoL had to go back to adventurer guild and gather people, then travel back to the dungeon to do it.
So it's actually not as fast as we experienced. Maybe a dungeon run take a week or two and some failures in between, but showing us all those events are boring.

How would WoL knew where to jump, which door to open, where to get the key, what boss is ahead otherwise?

[Arzalis]

The MSQ is largely single player anyway, so I'd say go for it. Being able to clear the MSQ without other people is fine, imo. I honestly prefer to do the first run of a dungeon in ShB with trusts because it makes more narrative sense and I like to see their little dialog snippets and such.

The WOL is travelling with a capable group of characters, so of course they'll help. Extending this concept to MSQ trials just seems to make sense, honestly.

I wouldn't add it to ex fights, optional trials, and such though. Just the few MSQ ones we have per xpac.