Please, please introduce Duty Support for Trials

[Sesera]

lol.. i leveled the entire msq 4 years ago as a dragoon with basically no que.

so ud rather play with ai that cant talk back than real people incase they dont ?

I had to wait over 70 minutes to do Titania and progress the Il Mheg story quest. So yes I'd rather get instant queue pop to a trial with npc that do not talk over "real" people that don't bring much more than AI when it comes to human interactions and spend more than 1h stuck in the msq.

However I'd take real player over AI if queue time is less than 10-15 minutes any day.

[sindriiisgaming]

I had to wait over 70 minutes to do Titania and progress the Il Mheg story quest. So yes I'd rather get instant queue pop to a trial with npc that do not talk over "real" people that don't bring much more than AI when it comes to human interactions and spend more than 1h stuck in the msq.

However I'd take real player over AI if queue time is less than 10-15 minutes any day.

Literally just use nn and ask a mentor to pop it for you... its the whole point of the mentor system

[Amenian]

The trust should be getting more and more cut back as the game goes forward tbh. Why play an mmo to play solo

I've never understood this take. Someone choosing to play via trust by themselves has no effect on those who prefer to play with others. Those of us that don't like trust are still queueing for roulettes, duty finder, party finder, et. al. Why be bothered that some people don't want to do that? Personally, I say if someone wants to do that content by themselves, especially when learning the content or their role, more power to them. Let them learn within their comfort zone and be able to experience the entire story. It hurts me, and you, not one bit.

[sindriiisgaming]

I've never understood this take. Someone choosing to play via trust by themselves has no effect on those who prefer to play with others. Those of us that don't like trust are still queueing for roulettes, duty finder, party finder, et. al. Why be bothered that some people don't want to do that? Personally, I say if someone wants to do that content by themselves, especially when learning the content or their role, more power to them. Let them learn within their comfort zone and be able to experience the entire story. It hurts me, and you, not one bit.

Yes they do. They remove themselves from the pool of players quing for duties, which only makes the que longer. They're not incentivised to play t/h because they it's not exactly fun having urianger only heal you and not dps, and alphinaud can't even be trusted with that. Or heal while tancred doesn't pop a single mit and can only handle 3 mobs.
They don't socialize, nobody can give them feedback if they're spamming Cure 1 and they generally just have a worse experience especially if they die. It's also content that rewards prepulling. Something in later content can get u kicked from dutys. Increasing this system beyond dungeons will be further determental to these players and us too by proxy. 90% of time I have to play war in dng just so I can take care of myself and solo the boss if my healer floors.

Trust was genuinely a mistake of a system that should have been linked to grand companies and nothing else

[TaleraRistain]

The trust should be getting more and more cut back as the game goes forward tbh. Why play an mmo to play solo

Solo is an *option* the same as grouping is. They're giving us a choice in how we want to interact with the MSQ. Someone choosing Duty Support for a first run also doesn't mean they want to play solo. They just want that experience for their first time through. I do Duty Support first on anything available now I can listen to the NPC banter, explore around if there are things to read, and just generally enjoy figuring out the mechanics for myself. There are still plenty of reasons to then run those dungeons through roulettes.

[VerdeLuck]

The trust should be getting more and more cut back as the game goes forward tbh. Why play an mmo to play solo

1 - Spoilers. On playing endwalker I had the plot spoiled to me while playing the first trial by someone who thought it was funny, if I could play the story solo I wouldn't have to worry about this.

2 - Population. Certain Data Centers are entirely underpopulated and gettting duties compelted is impossible in off times on patches. I have had times where I sit for 2+ hours in DF waiting for a normal mode trial to pop. 3+ hours for alliance raids to pop, etc. If it's required for the story it should be soloable full stop, to prevent people from getting hard stuck from a lack of players to fill out the party.

3 - Can take your time to learn. The Duty Support in dungeons are great, you can take your time, explore the areas, learn at your own pace. Other players on their roulettes will try to flame you and rush you through asap to get their tomes and that feels terrible when it's your first time and you're doing the story. I still remember how much I hated Praetorium because I did it as a sprout and the entire instance was people running past the enemies to trigger a cutscene and then whining for 45 minutes about how they hated this duty. Thanks SE, real climactic ending to ARR to have a guy in a pig suit whining about how much of a burden it is he got this in his mentor roulette and has to play with me the entire duty.

[TaleraRistain]

1 - Spoilers. On playing endwalker I had the plot spoiled to me while playing the first trial by someone who thought it was funny, if I could play the story solo I wouldn't have to worry about this.

2 - Population. Certain Data Centers are entirely underpopulated and gettting duties compelted is impossible in off times on patches. I have had times where I sit for 2+ hours in DF waiting for a normal mode trial to pop. 3+ hours for alliance raids to pop, etc. If it's required for the story it should be soloable full stop, to prevent people from getting hard stuck from a lack of players to fill out the party.

3 - Can take your time to learn. The Duty Support in dungeons are great, you can take your time, explore the areas, learn at your own pace. Other players on their roulettes will try to flame you and rush you through asap to get their tomes and that feels terrible when it's your first time and you're doing the story. I still remember how much I hated Praetorium because I did it as a sprout and the entire instance was people running past the enemies to trigger a cutscene and then whining for 45 minutes about how they hated this duty. Thanks SE, real climactic ending to ARR to have a guy in a pig suit whining about how much of a burden it is he got this in his mentor roulette and has to play with me the entire duty.

In regards to #3, when Barby came out I was off that day and did that trial all of about 6 hours after it had dropped and people were already putting up doritos and expecting people to follow their instructions. THAT is the environment that I would love to avoid with Duty Support trials. Even on day one we aren't allowed to run anything blind.

[VerdeLuck]

In regards to #3, when Barby came out I was off that day and did that trial all of about 6 hours after it had dropped and people were already putting up doritos and expecting people to follow their instructions. THAT is the environment that I would love to avoid with Duty Support trials. Even on day one we aren't allowed to run anything blind.

Yeah Alliance raids are annoying as well. Day 1 of Thaleia and Euphrosyne people were already doing doritos and posting strats in chat. I eventually just created a macro to clear markers and doritos and just spammed that before every pull to cope with it because it's insufferable to backseat to that degree on day 1.
Always do duties solo first if you can, avoids the headache of people trying to backseat you or get you to read guides first.

[TaleraRistain]

Yeah Alliance raids are annoying as well. Day 1 of Thaleia and Euphrosyne people were already doing doritos and posting strats in chat. I eventually just created a macro to clear markers and doritos and just spammed that before every pull to cope with it because it's insufferable to backseat to that degree on day 1.
Always do duties solo first if you can, avoids the headache of people trying to backseat you or get you to read guides first.

Whole reason I do this stuff on launch day is getting that chance at being blind just like everyone else but now it's basically if you don't rush MSQ and skip cutscenes and do things in the first hour, you don't get a chance to experience things blind anymore. I love doing things with other random people but some of them really ruin it for everyone.

[KisaiTenshi]

The trust should be getting more and more cut back as the game goes forward tbh. Why play an mmo to play solo

People have been saying this since 1.0

The point of the "NPC" characters is so that new players can have the intended experience, and not the miserable experience of "skip the cut scenes, wall-to-wall pulls, did you watch a tutorial on youtube" that experienced players still pull on pickup groups and has been the norm since 3.0.

ARR, was not bad, but a lot of people think it was the worst slog in it's original incarnation, and yes, maybe the overall design of ARR level 1-30 felt like "why am I doing NPC's chores, how does this push the story forward", and many people were begging for those story skips. However without re-writing ARR into a 1-30 story that all the classes converge on, and then 31-50 for the jobs to splinter into, there's not really a way to rewrite ARR with a better story when you pretty much had to play a DPS to get through this content originally, or you needed friends. What the game needed was for the all of the class quests to actually matter in the story, and they do not, outside of a few references you get if you play that correct job during that content (eg lancer/dragoon when going into HW.) The post-ARR is the part most people had issues with because it felt like filler instead of the Crystal Tower which is more story-relevant.

How to deal with the trials is actually pretty straight forward, the reason you keep having to wait in the queue is because the people playing the roulettes purposely avoid being dropped into high level queues because it's inefficient to farm tomes. All the developers need to do is apply the same auto-scripted logic to NPC's and then stick them "in the roulette" in a "bottom" position. eg If you queue for level 90 content, and nobody is there, it starts adding "NPC" players after 2 minutes of nobody in a required role.

Then these NPC's basically use the minimal logic needed for the job:
a) Avoid the floor AOE's
b) Avoid pulling when not a tank
c) No healing unless in the healer role
d) No DPS actions unless the tank has enmity

The human DPS players are still required to do the primary damage in the fight. NPC players will be "minimum ilevel" only, and DPS will slow down if the boss is being killed too fast. So playing it will be faster with human players. The developers know how the trials are choreographed. They can write it so that "NPC WoL's" are randomly generated with the minimum gear ilevel, and skill level for the fight (eg no "level sync" characters.)

But ultimately different people get different things out of MMORPG's. Some people want to play everything solo but still want the social element. Some people RP. But if a game forces you to interact with people who just want to rush the content, then you're just going to not enjoy the content, ever.