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.

Agreed, all I'd really want out of them is to be a bit sturdier and a minor potency increase to the brd/cors, if they got rid of the annoying aoes they do that's great but I wouldnt be surprised if that's part of the presumed trade off of summoning faulty bots, if you dont like it, get actual people, they'll have thier own quirks but still perform leagues better than qultada/ulmia/Vala/Ygnas etc(least i'd hope so).

While that definitely USED TO be the developer philosophy, I'm not so sure that remains the current thinking under Fujito in 2026. Ever since they did the player survey, which got a strong response from players who reported they are interested in pure solo play, it is becoming apparent that some of the developer decisions are shifting to support that play style (Limbus, shared Dyna Divergence instances, etc.)

I totally understand the opposing viewpoint that trusts should remain inferior to a real player, but I would be entirely unsurprised to see trusts getting buffed to the point where they ARE better than a mediocre real player.

And really, doing that at the increasingly more solo-friendly endgame is not that out of line with how trusts are far better than a mediocre player at lower levels. While leveling up, Shantotto II is ridiculously strong for damage for a long time, the tanks are incredible, I'd say healers are at least on par with a run of the mill player, the melee DDs are serviceable (definitely way more useful than they are at endgame). I can see the logic in making trusts similarly useful for a lv99+ player.

It's still the philosophy. Nothings changed.

There's a 0% chance anything really changes next month either. WooHoo +50 hp and +5 STR, amazballs.

Durability is only an issue for tanks and dumbasses that convert while fighting in range, koru

Their issues are core issues that some stats does not fix.

If they suddenly make zeid II invincible, stop casting all spells, give him full haste and full time last resort, and +100% WSD he's still not going to be better than a melee whm.

Nothing that hasn't been said before, but if we got our wishlist for making trusts not suck - stat boost, equips, gambit system - then a bunch of players would take a hard look at paying monthly sub fees for their private army of alts.

So they've got an interesting tradeoff to consider - help the soloers at the potential expense of the bot armies... and that's why we'll get a mediocre trust update that makes no one happy, except maybe Eiryl because he'll get to say he told us all.

Some of these trusts ARE better than mediocre real players.

Cornelia
-Doesn't interrupt WS
-Doesn't waste MP resources on getting healed with insufficient -DT gear
-Can't die
-Always keeps buffs up
-Always follows you, never gets lost
-Eliminates the need to call shitty bards for Haste

There's a reason we cry when she's gone.

Her special case aside, with MM45 soloing Sgili RP, Shantotto II consistently lands 8-10k double MB nuke when I 2-step Darkness on NIN. If Cast after Ygnas (because her logic is set to "do not run in to engage", similar to selt'heus or other mages like Koru), she stands completely out of range of Terminal Bloom's Doom. Was able to take Sgili to 75% between both of our nukes in about 2 minutes. Never died. (If I had a way to control the add I could probably take it to 40% in time limit). I called Monberaux after Shantotto, and they all stood far at range, while Monberaux chucked Holy Waters at me the entire fight. It was a lovely system.

AAEV can tank Ongo V25 for about 8 full minutes with Ygnas healing before Ygnas runs out of MP. If I could give her more than Regen/ShellV/Embrava, or if I just healed her too, she might survive the full 15 minutes (through fetters).

They're quite sturdy with the right MM levels, which is why I think just making that buff active full time is the best way to start buffing these things. The effect is very noticeable at MM30+

Tanks should just have default 50DT without even considering MM

They're not the issue. They're an issue but not the issue.

You can get on war in 5/5 nyame, no MM and outsurvive AAEV

There's 10 tanks 10 healers with varying degrees of uselessness. and EIGHTY DD that are all completely useless. That's the issue at hand.

...And if the DD were any good, then the tanks would lose hate to them because they all have zero enmity+ and they always get stomped because they all have 0 Subtle blow and 0 meva.

All trusts should have 50% DT, 100% subtle blow, perfect haste, yoran level MEVA - as a starting point to being just usable at 99.

The worst part of Qultada for example isn't his interrupting skillchains its the tp feed. useless *** giving the mob tp with his 5 damage sword hits.
(and causing koru to waste mp on distract II and flurry II)
Same with Joachim's stupid *** rock throwing. That ***ain't cute, that's 200 tp that does not need to be given to mobs.

A bunch of random DD trusts that are all mediocre (at least at max level) is working as intended.

I don't think they were really designed for major utility, it's just an array of mostly interchangeable, sort of customization-lite gameplay element, intended more for casual players who just want to see a character they think looks cool or who they liked in the mission/quest stories. It's barely any different than the myriad of cosmetic gear options or mounts.

There absolutely could have just been 10 DD trusts instead of 80 if the point was to differentiate them for utility's sake. That was never the point, IMO. People here sometimes forget that there are a lot of casual players who don't post here (they aren't hardcore enough to ever wade into a forum), don't have a deep understanding of game mechanics (and don't care to), and just want to call up a random DD trust as they solo their way though stuff. This is for them, not you.

Doesn't mean they can't do a more universal upgrade to slap better stats on the trusts, which in some ways actually IS a nice improvement for players who do understand the mechanics more and can make better use out of this tool for their solo/lowman play.

From a damager perspective, most of the DD (and mage) trusts are interchangeable and are very weak at Lv 99. But some of them do have interesting effects that make them worth using specific ones. For example, if you keep Zeid or AATT hasted, they can stun TP moves every time one goes off. Even better if you have access to Matsui-P, who has unique SC and MB logic. Some trusts have special attacks instead of melee attacks (like Darrcuiln oi Teodor). If you use one of them vs Selkit (who responds to special attacks with Hell Scissors), you can lock the NM into a non-stop cycle of Hell Scissors spam. This is how I killed it way back on BLU or NIN.

There's a few here and there that have some neat effects, but they're all super weak for our level. Under 99, some of them are straight up busted.

Oh, absolutely. There are little quirks for some of them that a player who understands the mechanics can use to their advantage. Even something like calling a trust of the appropriate job to get the job bonus for an associated Phantom Roll from a COR.

But for the most part, I view the DD trusts as mostly designed to behave slightly differently as a way to distinguish them for some lore and characterization flavor to give them a bit more "personality", and less intended to be a significantly impactful game mechanic. Yeah, a savvy player might know that Lhe Lhangavo and Maat are the only two of the 7 non-UC MNK trusts that use Formless Strikes on blunt-resistant mobs. Occasionally you might find a weird niche use for something like that, but as a practical matter it doesn't amount to anything.

But like... why would your typical casual player choose Babban over Abenzio (or use either one of them in the first place)? Same reason they might choose a Crawler mount over a Tiger mount - they just like the way it looks. I think the devs have always understood that.

I love ranger. Watching the gun shooting animation was like watching the coolest person in the world non challantly raise their massive canon at eye sight, extra bonus cool points for one handed shooting animations, and blast whatever bunny was in their sights to dust.

It made me level bow ranger and shoot wooden arrows at colibris for way too long.

And you want to make ranger into another savage blade spam job? Like there's not enough of those.

Ranged ranger *or gtfo of the forest*.

Does anyone have a good path to quick FES keys for the Valetines event?

Oh those were some fun memories. Camping out in bhaflau thickets near the ruins in the middle of the map. The paladin would pull toucan sam to the camp, the warrior would take 30 seconds to build tp for his weaponskill only to miss 3 swings of his rampage because he was eating meat mithkabobs instead of sushi and IT colibris had very high evasion. Nobody dared eat anything but cheap food in the presence of snatch morsel. Well, nobody but the dark knight who whiffled every hit of his guillotine even with sushi because dark knight had terrible accuracy (yes I know this was player misconception). It took the party over half a minute to whittle the bird down to 80%. Then out of the blue.... BAMMMMMM-tshctchtchtchtchcth. The bird's HP plummets from 80% to 15% in the blink of an eye. The sidewinder sings true, striking the bird dead on and enraging the flappy menace to no end. It tears off the paladin and makes a bee line for the ranger standing over by the stone pillar. The paladin freaks out, frantically doing everything he can to take hate back. Flash!! Cure III. Sentinel! Provoke!! "GET OVER HERE!!!!! But nothing works. The angry bird pummels the poor ranger with its pecking flurry, demolishing the poor sap like the wet paper bag they were.

Two minutes later after the party finishes chewing through the last 15% of the birds health the white mage gets a chance to kneel for a while to recover enough mana to cast Raise II on the hole-ridden body lying on the ground.

Truth be told, Pinaka brings back all those memories in the very best of ways. I got to take ranger out to Limbus wave 1 NMs last week and pew pew the unicorns. When you can cap your hover shot stacks on something Sarv spamming is literally god mode. Fortunately modern rangers have access to /drg and super jump, and tanks are a lot better at holding hate. So this time the story didn't end with a dead cat laying on the ground.

Such good times :3

I dont think you had the slots mixed up.
Seonyx from Bahamut finished the Sworn feet.

for people who can't see the image, it's 7%TA and 5Phalanx.

Oh my, so it's real.
So odd but what can we say?
Wonder what their reasons for this peculiar approach were.

Hands/feet being higher than head/legs feels gross

For everyone that wondered what the choco-things do, but couldn't be bothered to look

1 stat +1 and movement speed +12% for 3 minutes

It's been 14 years since the last time they were used, duration was changed to 3 minutes for all 3 now