I do think it's important to know what you want in an FC.
- Some folks are just looking for facilities -- an FC house, the FC buffs, etc. -- and don't really want to do things with an FC.
- Some folks are looking to go hardcore on endgame content, wanting to run savages and ultimates and so on, and want an FC of like-minded sorts that will do that.
- Some folks just want an FC that's a community, with no specific focus but willing to do a wide variety of stuff together.
...and so on. For me, the third point proves to be what I wanted; my FC is a reasonably active mid-sized group, where we have folks with a wide enough variety of interests to be into everything. Savage raiding, blue mage content, big fishing, mahjong, whatever it is there's someone who really loves it and is more than happy to share that enthusiasm if asked. Folks will happily put together groups to teach endgame extreme and savage stuff, or just happily help sprouts run dungeons. It's a nice chill group, very accepting -- we have a number of trans folks in the FC, so the one hard rule is that anyone who joins must be LGBT-friendly, as we're not going to let jerks ruin the group for those members -- and I'm very happy with it. This is my "forever home" in FFXIV.
But if I'd been going hardcore on just endgame content and wanted a group that was going to be focused on "Let's put together optimal groups to get in the maximum amount of time trying to run serious high-tier endgame content!", even with as nice as the members all are, this FC would've been a bad match for me; that's just not the focus of the FC.
