Dev Tracker - Discussion

What if the whole “trust system update” is a mistranslation and they actually meant adventuring fellow update all along? Honestly I’m here for it

Now your fellows can call their own trusts..

They've since abandoned the entire Fellow System in favor of the Trust system, which is a shame because they were fun to customize. I would be happy if they did rework it, but from what I can tell, Fellows have been deprecated entirely.

you ain't kidding! my good old vinja-kanja ("wine and weed" to his friends) was kitted out as a bst in khimaira-style armor, a wyvern helm, and an axe and shield.

definitely a shame the system wasn't kept updated. they could've given them instincts similar to monstrosity, updated to 119, etc.

edit: pulled out the signal pearl to grab a screenshot and turns out i'd left the dude in a tuxedo and chocobo wand for some reason. oh well.

They did that much afaik, supposedly they work about as well as some trusts just with more of a pain to summon vs just grabbing from a menu. They just decided to stop at that point, and none of say the cheers effect fellows which is kinda lame

It's often easier to reimplement an idea than build on a version someone made before. The other major performance difference is that trusts only evaluate their business logic when you're engaged, while Adventuring Fellows do it all the time. Between those two, I bet we have our explanation of why the fellow system is separate.

I would have been tempted to roll it into the Trust system (similar to chocobo whistle) if I was them and just declare that now they would work the same way as trusts, but they didn't go that route.

I'm assuming they couldnt since it'd be a downgrade unless they could fit some kind of AI change into a trust (tank/healer/dd) based on what you spec'd your fellow as, so beyond just the different races the fellow could be it'd need 3 copies of itself, seems like too big a hassle when they say they have limited slots for spells assuming trusts also fit into that limit.

Well, more than 3 since they could use any type of melee weapon too, just becomes a mess to make it a trust unless they shrank it into 1 specific role/weapon type

We had the level 62 RSE pieces that were actually good for their time, they were also just boots and hands no? Creek F mitts/clomps etc.

Now that you mention it, Abyssea also had RSE
ie: https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Torrid_Gages

It was only gloves from what I can see and I dont think anyone gave a ***about them other than straight to NPC.

The best feature of Fellows was the ability to turn off AOE Weapon Skills. They must have known very early on that this would become an annoyance to players. Why they didn't also include that logic (or simply the ability to turn off *ALL* WS via a command) was a letdown, because, while I appreciate having Qultada or Excenmille S for their paltry attack buffs, they have terrible AI logic (WS as SOON as they hit 1000 tp) and will always interrupt your WS. Half the time I choose to not even bother calling them for this very reason, or get the buff and immediately dismiss them. This is what makes Trusts like Sylvie + Cornelia so much better than all the others, because they apply passive buffs and don't get in the player's way. Even Ygnas would have been perfect, if not for his stupid AOE attack or his habit of applying his weaker Haste version in place of Haste II from a RDM trust (and their logic will NOT overwrite Haste if it is already on you, also dumb). Just simple tweaks that are so easy to make and are already otherwise implemented in the game, and they still seem to miss on the obvious.

They're bad on purpose

A beaten to death topic

There's what, 8 WHM trusts and
Only 1(2) of them use solace.
Only 1 uses misery.
Only 1 will cast barelement. Zero cast barstatus.
Only 1 will cast regen.
Only 1 uses sacrosanctity.
Only 1 uses devotion. And Martyr.
Only 1 uses auspice.

Pretty much how I view it, Fellows were a novelty since party play was still a very regular thing and a fellow is unlikely to change that(1 extra substandard party member isnt offering you much back then) so you could iron out some of its issues, even if its still a bit jank. While trusts are more of a band-aid as party play is much lower than what it used to be(lower pop, more multi-boxers, what have you) so trusts "have" to be flawed so as to not eclipse actual party members.

Not to say they shouldnt have those flaws taken out since the player vastly overpowers them even moreso than when they were 1st introduced in just about every area, but if say ygnas' didnt have his aoe move or his buffs were lower priority/higher potency(say a 3-5 min haste 2 instead of the 1 min it is) then he'd be "better" than a fresh newbie whm, and we cant have that.

By better in this case i mean he functions very well out of the box compared to a fresh whm who may still be learning, an actual whm still offers all those things listed above so again, vastly better but for something you can pop out and basically ignore as they'll do everything they need to automatically, gotta have some kind of trade off

I dont see the problem here.
Trusts shouldnt be better than a PC who cant clear the first floor of Sheol A.