Multi-player duty support

[charquo]

First of all, my apologies if this has already been hashed out. I wouldnt be surprised, but after browsing through 10+ pages of search results my eyes started bleeding.
My wife and I like to play together. Much of the casual content in this game seems to be not-group oriented, and that's fine. The duty support system is great when we want to learn a dungeon. Our problem:
When the duty support is not available for a particular dungeon, and our quest goals coincide, going for a group of live players is necessary. That's a good thing, don't get me wrong. We grew up in Everquest where the need for other people to play with was prevalent. Our problem? We like to experience the content, read the dialogue, view the cut scenes, clear the dungeons. What we encounter are players who simply want to blitz every single dungeon. Skip everything possible, pull literally everything to clear as quick as possible, and start each boss fight regardless of who and how many are still viewing the cut scene.
My request: Is it possible to expand the duty support dungeon options and give the option for a 2-man group to select (or be randomly assigned) npc support to fill out the rest of the party?
People want to blast through the story line because they've done it 100 times before, or they're power gamers who want to get to endgame content asap, and that's all fine. It's just that their style of gaming is not compatible with ours and we were hoping for options.

Again, apologies if this has already been stated/requested. I'm old and my search skills are less than these days.
Thank you

[LilimoLimomo]

I would love to have the option to use duty support with my spouse as well. There are days when I love playing with strangers, and there are days when I don't want to be that social and just want to do some dungeons with my spouse.

[AelixWinterwind]

This 100%! It would make the starting experience a lot more welcoming for couples or friends. It's one of the biggest reasons some friends had dropped off. They wanted to play primarily as a couple, taking their time and exploring dungeons together, but couldn't.

The lack of this with duty support and the lonely experience for the MSQ is why I struggle to get my partner to play as well.

[Exmo]

I'd love this as well. Having to disband the party before a trust dungeon during the MSQ just feels wonky.

Related: when a quest involves moving into a purple circle to smush some mobs, please make it clearer what will happen if one person in the party kills the mobs while the quest is active for another member in the party. I think at times the quest has progressed for both players, but other times if the second player moves into the purple circle then more mobs spawn... After being burnt a couple times we now always disband the party to make the outcome more intuitive, but really a clear and concise outcome should always happen without needing to disband, both players should feel like they contributed to advancing the quest, and mobs should scale up according to party composition.

[Enkidoh]

As I understand it, there are two reasons possibly why they don't allow this - the first is purely pragmatic. Duty Support is meant to be a safety net to allow players to complete story content at their own pace without having to be 'roadblocked' by Duty Finder not filling parties. So SE's way of thinking is if you want to do it with a friend, use Duty Finder or Party Finder and do it with other players, not NPCs. This is also the reason why Duty Support parties tend to be much slower than a normal player party run in a dungeon or trial, the system is deliberately designed to be slower so as to further encourage players to form actual parties for the content if they're more interested in getting through it as quickly as possible.

The second reason is more technical, I recall it mentioned (but I lack a citation on it) that due to how the Duty Support/Trust NPCs AI are scripted, they take the lead from the player's character, so adding in a second player confuses the AI as it doesn't know who to follow and potentially causes glitches and issues. Nothing particularly insolvable with time and resources, but again due to Duty Support being a 'last resort' for players to complete main scenario content and not the prefered means of completing content, this is something they're simply not going to look at I'm afraid.

[Mawlzy]

Nothing particularly insolvable with time and resources, but again due to Duty Support being a 'last resort' for players to complete main scenario content and not the prefered means of completing content, this is something they're simply not going to look at I'm afraid.

Is Duty Support really regarded as a last resort? Not saying you're wrong, just never thought of it that way.

Irrespective of discussions of "how the content should be played," one might hope facilitating two people who want to play together might be consistent with MMO philosophy? Like is playing with three strangers you're never going to talk to again really more "the genuine MMO experience" than running content with a friend?

[Exmo]

The second reason is more technical, I recall it mentioned (but I lack a citation on it) that due to how the Duty Support/Trust NPCs AI are scripted, they take the lead from the player's character, so adding in a second player confuses the AI as it doesn't know who to follow and potentially causes glitches and issues. Nothing particularly insolvable with time and resources, but again due to Duty Support being a 'last resort' for players to complete main scenario content and not the prefered means of completing content, this is something they're simply not going to look at I'm afraid.

This can be addressed by having NPCs take the lead from the party leader only (or "the player who is alive and ordered topmost in an invisible party list"). This would not change single player trust dungeons in any way. There would be some edge cases where it results in their behavior being unintuitive such as handing spread mechanics but the cost is worth the benefit.