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

[Terin]

Honestly, I forget Squadrons exist most of the time, even though I make an effort to send them on missions whenever I go to Ul'dah for the glamour dresser (seems the most convenient location, as I'm in Immortal Flames).

It's obviously not a bad system, but it seems a bit sad that there's a full catalog of "characters" that you can get to join your Squadron, but you're limited to only eight total. Especially when there are also "special" members you have a rare chance to recruit, who have unique glamours.

For that matter, between trying to handle all their different glamours, the fact you can change classes but only with rare consumable items, and the "Bonus" effects for pairing them up with certain other members... the system honestly feels a little unwieldy.

Yet, there *is* something kind of cool about building those guys up, and forming your own little "army". I've still not quite gotten a handle on the "Trust" system and needing to level up those characters separately, but it's hard not to see immediate comparison between the two systems.

Personally, I can't help but wonder if it would be worth "merging" these two systems in some capacity, and just revamping them a bit? Maybe instead of all these different Squadron manuals where "sometimes RNG will get you a different character" or "now this character can become a different class", maybe just say "Hey, if you've completed certain optional quests that already exist, these characters will join your Squadron".

And obviously, the Scions and friends just automatically join your as part of the MSQ.

And instead of actively changing jobs, or having to manage a billion different Glamours, maybe you just say each character is assigned to their default job, and one or two full "Outfits" they can unlock. After all, there are a LOT of potential Squadron members already, and it might help give them more personality if they had their own outfits to unlock, instead of just slapping your own gear onto them.

To differentiate them, I'd keep the "normal" Squadron members as the base "Classes", while only the Scions and crew get the more prestigious "Jobs". Maybe Scions are a bit stronger, while the other characters get their unique Synergy Bonuses, so you have a little incentive no matter how you want to build out your own team.

I dunno. I think the Squadrons are just a really cool system, that unfortunately feels a bit bogged-down by being fairly obsolete. And with so much time and care having gone into creating all those characters for the Squadrons, it would honestly be cool if you could unlock ALL of them.

And hey, maybe they could randomly appear and walk around your Personal Island Sanctuary? In fact, that would be a really cool way to bring attention to this revamped system.

Any thoughts?

[Vencio]

Most definitely!

Although I am leaning towards more to have usage of our personal retainers.

Honestly either way it would be fantastic & more engaging…even better, have them as our combat partners when PvEing like our Chocobos.

So many potentials….I truly wonder if you’re indeed listening to is SE as much as I am skeptical

[Boblawblah]

I'm just past having all jobs at 60 now, so yea, it's a bitter sweet moment to think that there's no real point to Squadrons anymore. I enjoyed building my squadron and leveling them up, and seeing their damage go from awful to actually really good. I'd love to see them incorporated somehow into Trust/duty support.

[LioJen]

They should be expanded beyond the Grand Companies to be our personal Warrior of Light Squadron. You know all those "Adventurers" we're told by the NPCs to gather for the story-required trials and dungeons could just be changed to our squadron.

Also allow our Chocobo Companion to join the Squad and go into dungeons, as well as retainers.

[RitsukoSonoda]

They should be expanded beyond the Grand Companies to be our personal Warrior of Light Squadron. You know all those "Adventurers" we're told by the NPCs to gather for the story-required trials and dungeons could just be changed to our squadron.

Also allow our Chocobo Companion to join the Squad and go into dungeons, as well as retainers.

Chocobo sure. Retainers, nah. They're OP as hell considering they solo EX trials as DoL and DoH jobs...

[ReynTime]

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.

[Fyrebrand]

Duty Support/Squadrons/Companions/Retainers should have all been one big unified system where you can recruit NPCs or make your own. Bring one with you out into the open world to fight monsters with you, or send them on jobs to gather materials and trophies. Form a party with them to clear dungeons without needing to use Duty Finder, or dispatch a group to fulfill Grand Company missions.

Disconnect the storage and market board systems from these NPCs, as that never really made much sense to me anyway. Just have your item storage be its own NPC in town, a quick single-click interface to open your bank. And have the market board itself be your interface for both buying and selling -- it never should have been split between two different places.

You could still have a chocobo companion as your first basic unit, but I think it would just be for open world stuff alongside you and not for dungeons or missions. Maybe you could even capture and train other monster types for companions too, and they'd have their own unique abilities. I wonder, if Beast Master ends up being the new Limited Job, is this the kind of thing it will do?

[Denji]

i find it very weird that they separated it from trusts seemingly for no reason.

i guess it's because maintaining the rest of the system (sending people out on missions etc) would be annoying and you'd have to make a 2nd group of people to have in any shb dungeons but like... man. it's lame they just neglected it.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Can’t happen. They’re working on FF8 Polygon Remaster. Please give the small indie company money.

[ThaCa]

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.