Free Company Member Communications

The Free Company system in FFXIV ARR is a good one, and has a lot of good features. One area though that it falls down on is communication within the Free Company.

As a Free Company master, I currently have no way to address my complete membership with a single message. My membership is spread across many timezones and so simply sending a message on the FC chat channel is completely unworkable. The Company Board allows a very, very short message that is more of a greeting or reminder and nothing else.

Practically speaking, there is no way for a company master to communicate with all company members with the same message, unless all members happen to be online at the same time. With a large Free Company or one that is spread across many timezones (EU and US players for example), it's very difficult to communicate and coordinate a Free Company within the game. Instead we rely on external forums, email, applications and/or the Lodestone. It's nearly impossible to get everyone on the same page to use any one of these things, and that slows down communication with the entire company.

I have a number of suggestions to improve this aspect of life in FFXIV A Realm Reborn. The first of these would be to provide a simple in-game discussion forum for each Free Company with the Company master as the moderator of the FC forum. The Lodestone is fine and dandy, but it's not viewable in-game, and PS3/PS4 gamers in particular cannot simply tab to it when they want to read something. A PS3 based online JRPG game I played until June last year included a simple discussion forum within it's guild system as well as an ability for guild leaders to message all members of the guild at once. I'm quite surprised that Final Fantasy 14 has inferior Guild communication options compared to that game.

I think that FFXIV ARR should include the ability for Free Company members to read and post to the Lodestone forum for their Free Company. I also think it would be good to allow Company masters the ability to mail the entire Free Company membership through Moogle mail with a single message.

Free Company Communication & Management:

1. Create a simple in-game interface to allow players to read and post to the Lodestone FC forum.
2. Add permission settings to allow Free Company master and officer ranks to have the ability to manage the forum - including whether members can post or not (by rank).
3. Add a setting to make the forum publicly viewable or private.
4. Add a Company Rules tab to the FC Information screen so that Company master and officers can post the Free Company rules.
5. Add permissions to the Company rules page to allow/deny editing of the rules.
6. Add permissions to the Company rules page to allow public or private (FC members only) visibility of company rules.
7. Allow Company masters to message all company members via Moogle mail.