I read with some interest of the new ‘trust’ mechanic in Final Fantasy 14 via my blogroll. I agree with Bhagpuss that it sounds like a step in the right direction if not the perfect solution already. The game’s insistence on grouping while levelling through the Main Scenario Quest (the core story) has been a real bone of contention since the A Realm Reborn relaunch of the game. Runs when we have sporadically played are usually not too fraught for what are essentially pick-up groups (PUGs), but equally they are often silent and always at breakneck speed.
Here again!
Repeating a dungeon or trial in this way isn’t that big a deal, indeed most of the more veteran players are doing just that for alt jobs or some kind of repeatable content reward. Experiencing either for the first time in such a group however, is painful in my view – you rarely absorb what is going on in fights, and are often the one lagging behind or missing boss mechanics.
So the trust mechanic as a NPCs fill the party up concept is really nice, it will mean players can experience (entirely optionally) MSQ dungeons with slightly less zergy companions for that all important story-mode run through – I hope the NPCs won’t moan at you to ‘skip video’ in chat?
I’m not playing or following FFXIV at the moment as there are too many MMORPGs and too little gaming hours, but we did return to the game not so long ago for another free playtime period and it remains an utterly beautiful and charming game. The forced grouping is one of the points most putting husband and I off from playing it more regularly.
Were the ‘trust’ mechanism to be extended to all the MSQ dungeons, trials and raids for earlier expansions (we’ve barely just entered into Heavensward) – then I daresay we might be back there soon. However, this isn’t just about standardising the system across the whole game. Much more importantly I’d want the system to support duo players, not just soloers, also – have it fill up the party with appropriate-role NPCs for existing premade groups: so our healer+DPS duo would receive a tank and another DPS NPC to accompany us. That version of the ‘trust’ system could well tip the balance for me.
GamingSF 
If only a game allowed both of you to bring a companion and set it to whatever trinity role you want… 😉
@Shintar That’s very true, but then they screwed their own perfect small-group gameplay with several expansions worth of solo-only instances :”(
I’ve been leveling a second combat job with the Trust system and while it’s nice, it does have a bit of an issue.
When you finish the main story quest, you delevel them to 71, meaning you have to grind dungeons to level them again to do the story dungeons on jobs past your first leveled. They only gain one single, lump sum at the end of the dungeon, and so far, it is about half the speed of my own character leveling, so I’ll likely need to level them more on a third job. If I switch roles, I have to level another character, since the XP is only rewarded to the NPCs with you on the run.
It’s not awful, but it does start to feel tedious – current estimate is that leveling the full trust NPC set is around 113 runs. No idea if it’s actually going to be useful in patches – probably for the story dungeons that will come with 5.x patches, but so far I prefer it to waiting out DPS queues!
@Kaylriene thanks for the details!
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