New Trust System - Who Will You Upgrade First?

For every true solo hero there are a gazillion multiboxers.

No you don't. Solo means playing solo, it does not mean clearing Sortie bosses on Scholar like some kind of iron man competition. Most solo players just do stuff like Ambsucade V2 on N, and farm job points etc

The biggest current failure of this game, is these kinds of players run out of things to do and stop playing. Most people I've met that come from ff14, quit in around a year or two cause the difficulty goes vertical real fast and they cap the minor stuff they think will let them actually progress that stuff.

They get good gear, rema and still can't do the higher tier stuff.

I did

While i think XIs current endgame is kind of meh, placating to people who refuse to even try to move into any kind of group content (even 1 extra person like maletaru said can open up several opportunities and it often grows from there) would just result in making all of the content significantly easier which means either everyone completes it quicker and more quit out of boredom. Or the more likely scenario when it comes to future content; the grind becomes longer as everyone can progress at a similar rate i.e. limbus grind

The floor is already pretty reasonable if you remember that this is an old-style MMO, moreso in fact if you go back to how it used to be and you were essentially SoL if you didnt have atleast 3-4 people to do something with. Just make some friends

You can argue all day whether or not someone who solos should be able to get the same rewards as someone who groups, but that is entirely beside the point.

Assuming someone only wants to solo with trusts, with all the limits that implies, does this trust system have meaningful impact on their power and ability to do more than they were able to previously, within a reasonable time frame?

I think the answer is pretty obvious here.

Limbus fix I posted in the other thread:

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/58447/limbus-2025/83/#3784017

Still gated behind matters per week making the content last years.
Event friendly to solo w/ trust, casuals, multi-boxers and groups.

2-3 hours a week.. It would be can't miss content since the time/effort to reward ratio would be balanced out.

Limbus is a great place to use trust and would help make the trust buff system relevant.

Does the fact that many, many people would apparently rather spend upwards of $100 a month and master an unwieldy and frustrating system of multiboxing rather than rely on the other people who play this game to achieve their goals not inspire a moment's reflection over whether this is a good system or not

making friends in FFXI is a fine way to...make friends in FFXI, if that's your thing. It's a terrible way to get anything done.

The way XI is structured, taking "just one other person" is worse than just playing solo (unless they are wildly overgeared or on a key job). It means vastly way more healing for trusts that are really not that good in the first place for >1 player, way more TP given to the monster and so more damaging tp spam. It's far easier to wipe by taking 1-2 other people than just playing solo.

Also, if you just add 1 or 2 other people and wipe 1-2 times people will leave. Cause of the XP punishments etc, and you will be taught to never do that again due to the bad feelings/humiliation of that experience.

I mostly like how the game is now (changes to the more casual stuff would be nice), but XI was so much easier to have friends in 15 years ago. You could take your shitter friends to whatever and due to how many players were in an alliance, it would not matter so much.

That's not the case now, taking your 1 other rl friend who is super casual into things is a nightmare unless it's very easy stuff and you're so OP you can solo it regardless if they are there or not.

The irony of insisting that FFXI remain focused on groups of human players is that the basic mechanics of the game - most notably TP feed - actively work against the independent participation of multiple players towards a single goal.

That's not something limited to just XI but how far back do you want to go for that? Because that's been a thing since abyssea, even further really but you really saw it in aby, starting with 1-2 then working more in as the tools got better. If anything that's more of a comment on how easy XIs content design is due to absurd player buffing/mob debuffing and just general lack of challenge that you can just spam dmg/cures and typically survive/win, rather than any real strategy.




If you bring 2 DDs then yeah probably, as is often the case with the people starting up since solo benefits a DD most, but tank, healer, support? I guess you can call those key roles but that's still about a 3rd of the job pool as an option that often have an immediate benefit, even a mix of 2 DDs can still work but its pretty niche.

The thing about that is no one wants to be your whm. to be your rdm. to be your brd. to be your geo.

They want to smash control 1, too. THAT's why teaming up doesn't exist.

It's sub optimal to use 2 DD but 2 DD is the only way to play together. If a person is willing to heal/support slave, they don't want to duo with you, they want the 6 person gains.

That's the point: the difficulty is the friction of dealing with the other people who play this game. It is not a lack of commitment or inability to handle the challenge.

Other games don't have massive multiboxing subcultures because they have automated matchmaking that dispenses with the thing that ACTUALLY makes people treat this like a job: navigating your coworkers.

I have to disagree with this, making friends is the only reason that my character has progressed as far as it has today. Coming back to the game in 2019 from Voidwatch era left me extremely far behind. Without all the friends that I met along the way, I absolutely would not have been as successful just soloing or PUGing my way to W3 clears, Omen gear, Gaol climbs+wins, R30 gear, Stage 5 Prime, etc. Without the friends I made along the way, I would be stuck at the hard ceiling for soloing that Radial brought up.

Game needs a total job rehaul to make grouping up less of a ***show.

It's the same thing since 2003. Ideal party setup has needed a bard and healer/debuffer mage since. Once everyone found out how OP cor buffs are it included cor too. So now 3/6 party members are support.

Meanwhile game has 18dd classes. Even an auto group finder will get stuck waiting for the same support jobs every human group also waits for.

There's reasons, 18 of them, that 9/10 bards are someone's alt.

Yeah the problem is capping Haste, then attack, then unique buffs, being a multi-role job (i.e. healer+tank (PLD), or DD+buffer (COR BRD), or DD+enfeebler+buffer (RDM, DNC) and then not walling each other. SE started adding mechanics on top of one another over time (WS walls, Geomancy nerfs, running content), but never gave consideration which jobs would be able to overcome those obstacles in a balanced way. Then they started making dumb events where you had to run all over the place, so now you had to account for movement speed to get as much as you can get done. As it turned out, the jobs that were already good buffers in one particular area got better when these other lego blocks got placed in the way. COR can bolters, BRD can Mazurka. Oh you can absorb TP aminon? Yeah, BRD for Threnody and Frazzle 3 NP. Bosses hit hard? Kite them Gravity 2 NP, Distract and let PLD kite em. EZPZ. Then Nyame gear ruined it even further because now there was no reason to ever bring a third DD or an off-job, when you can bring COR BRD (GEO) RDM and buff damage even further. The jobs that struggled to keep up in the diversity department just fell further down the list. SE allowed the imbalance of jobs to get this bad.

It is a self-inflicted problem. Trusts "saved" the game during time of dwindling population, but fundamentally changed the premise of the entire game in that you can't do it by yourself.

Now situational awareness of your PC buddies is constantly diminished because your NPCs (other than limited AI) do just as they are told. Doubling down on making them stronger alleviates some symptoms but doesn't fix any problems.

Also, the job problem is only made worse with alts/trusts. Plenty of people used to play rdm and brd to get invites the second they logged in. I guarantee that played a huge factor in picking the job.

But we can't fix those problems because we don't have a time machine to go back to 2001 or whatever and give swirlies to whoever was responsible for the game being the way it is until they reconsider and make it something else.


Respectfully, this isn't because you made friends, this is because you played with people who were competent and capable of getting you towards your goals. That you consider them friends is incidental; if they were terrible, you'd be out of luck. I'm happy that you happened to enjoy the company of the people who got you there, but enjoying their company is not what did it.

The only way friendship plays into this is standing to be around them for seven years. Which is the whole thing here, and what a more robust matchmaking interface would make less necessary.

It's a double-edged sword that cuts both ways.

Trusts allow solo players to make some progress when they otherwise would not. I still recall being on Lakshmi shouting for literal hours for people to join me for Ultima/Omega HTBF and a few others. It was a nightmare. That's ultimately why I migrated servers, but the trust system was a great support for me in making progress in the interim while waiting for a real group. Even nowadays I can solo a few harder battlefields, Sortie bosses, a bunch of Dynamis etc, but only with the assistance of trusts. None of that would be possible without them, or it would be too much headache to bother.

On the other hand, this created a situation where people would be more inclined to do things on their own with the help of trusts instead of forming groups to accomplish it, because it was faster to get started. Even if it took longer to finish, it was a net positive (I can full clear a Zitah/Ru Aun in about 2 hours completely solo, minus maybe 2 bosses; it could take that long to form a group for it). The issue got exacerbated when people started Multiboxing, which drastically cut into the pool of players that would have been available. Even RP farming in Gaol, I am more likely to solo a triple RP charge than shout for other players to do it, not because I'm anti-social, but because it's faster and I can do it anytime (not to mention they powered up Trusts in Odyssey, so they are good enough as fill-in players).

Trusts were a necessary evil that wasn't supposed to replace real players (fyi - they don't), but give other players a chance at some progress. The system kind of became self-reliant and group forming suffered as a result.

I think trusts are net positive, don't get me wrong. But there are many implications that aren't immediately apparent. You've seen a lot of reluctance from people to team up with new people that are unprepared or not skilled enough to do the content they want help with, for example.

You know trusts have perfect reaction times, faithfully follow their AI routines, don't have glaring holes in their gearsets or uncapped skills, etc. All that hassle of playing with real people with underdeveloped characters is removed.

Individual player skill, especially among long term players is unchanged, but the floor for the whole population has lowered. Mercing gear and CP/EP only compounds this problem because you can AFK and learn nothing.

Just the slightest incentive to team up could have major impact. Could it be abused? Of course. But I'd much rather see anything in that direction than another point grind.