How about some FC raid content to give them meaning?

Lately, i've noticed that free companies seem to be nothing but a collection of small cliques. Which i guess is a natural development when people are being forced to stick to the same group in order to advance in the game.

Although it makes it hard to keep a FC together that way and there is little incentive to socialize outside of your own group.
On top of that, i have seen various cases of entire raid groups moving FCs or even servers in hopes of a more "active" Fc, but lets face it, there is nothing to do for a company as a whole.

What i would love to see is raid content that lets you take a variable amount of people from 8 to 32 or something around that (think dynamis?).

Now, the way the game is currently designed, it is hard to imagine what you could get out of such a raid since all the best gear is reserved for Coil.

We have a FC ranking now, what about making that mean something and rate FCs based on raid performance?
Give top rated FCs additional Company actions to purchase or special housing bonuses.

For example... Give us a large scale monster arena where we could have a company ranking based on progress in the arena based on speed of completion or what have you. Possibly some sidegrade gear to make it worthwhile?

I am just making things up as i go here...

tl:dr
Give us something to do as FC to give the whole thing a meaning so we don't split FCs up into small 8 man teams who just stick to themselves.

This is actually what crystal tower was anticipated to be, and I remember in 2.0 so many FCs pushing to get at least 3 raid teams for this content. Then I remember how many FCs disbanded and broke up when the news broke that CT will have no premades.

So yeah it's a good idea, but it seems they already decided against that path and focus on making coil into decent progression raid content (which it is and I am pleased by it). I also like the idea of progression tracking on the side bar, maybe they can track by achievements? I've mentioned this in other threads but it would be a godsend for progression tracking since as it stands it's simply whoever claims clears first and you don't actually know how many have cleared. If they already track clears on their end (since they care enough to give bg a shout out) and already track fc points surely this wouldn't be difficult to add.

Don't get me wrong. I love coil, and i think it is a great small scale raid content, it just doesn't help with establishing a healthy FC enviroment. Nor does it give you a real sense of competition between companies.

Crystal Tower's second raid is supposed to be in 2.3, as well as the ability for multiple parties to ally up and queue for CT together... but that said, it's unlikely it'll give anything beyond level 100 gear (MAYBE 105). So for most people who'd be intensely about progression, it's likely already largely irrelevant.

I guess it's a difference of FCs though. Mine is incredibly active in doing runs of basically everything together, whether to help new players through low level dungeons or Atma parties or just "hey anyone feel like CT or farming coil", we're generally always doing things.

I loved how they did it in White Knight Chronicles. Each guild had their own Town (no housing tho) where the Guild members could meet, arrange for runs or just chat. The guild town had 10 levels and the look of it changed with each new level you achieved. So it really felt like a reward if you met the criterias to upgrade your Town.

You were able to climb up the ladder related to certain activities. Even small guilds could reach rank 10, it just was slower and they had to be all active. There was also a Guild ranking where the Top Guilds received items that were available only to them, were available earlier than for others or available at a cheaper rate. Of course this also lead to problems (leave your guild and join biggest guild just to be in a Rank 10 guild) but all in all I really liked it.

With the Agenda they have introduced a nice system for individual players. I could imagine almost the same system for FC's. Climb up in ranks if a guild does x guild heists, dungeons, leves, whatever during a certain period. It should be something "Joe Average" can do and not related to the hardest content in the Game in my opinion. Something that brings a guild together without beeing a wall for some.

the logistics of running a 24-man raiding guild are far far different from one with multiple 8-man groups.

If they put in large group content (like CT) then it'll need to be trivial with mediocre loot (like CT). Otherwise the effects on FCs will not be pretty.

8-10 man raids are much more manageable then 24 man or more. I honestly prefer the small size and judging from how CT is with the groups I would say no thanks on bigger raid groups.

If you look at last years live letters they discuss about how in 2.3 they want to add FC primal hunts in the wild, considering we got hunts coming in 2.3 who knows could be them, sure hoping so

FFXIV has a group tax on all mid content. Extremes and Coil? Fine. Everything else? You get such vast quantities of Gil for not playing with friends, I really find it quite ridiculous. Treasure Maps being one of the only exceptions, but they're locked behind an 18 hour lockout unless you buy them. They really need to change that, it's pretty ridiculous that Treasure Maps have a lock out, but I can get 1~4k back to back doing the Duty Roulette all day. I actually miss 2.0, where my Free Company would do AK/WP together.

They really need to move the emphasis to joining Free Companies and Linkshells in this game, rather than just handing everyone a group with the Duty Roulette. It's nice in the short term, but in the long term you just get people who are dependent on it because they have no way of forming a group when they can play with complete strangers on different servers instead. Then we're stuck with the Duty Roulette forever and the rewards take away from those of us who play a MMO for the online aspect...

I would like to see some larger group content, but this game was meant to be casual by design, so apart from Crystal Tower and Frontlines I don't know if this will ever come to fruition. Like others, I feel an FC could be populated by a static raid group and maybe some casual players that would be decidedly non-raiders. When you start getting more than one group of raiders in a FC it causes segmentation since it's just not feasible to swap people between raid groups in most cases. Schedules usually don't mesh and then you have group synergy issues you have to work out.

Ragnarok Online had a fun event for Guilds only called the War of Emperium. Basicly, there were a cluster of forts and once a week for a few hours the gates would open and other guilds could try to fight their way through and capture the fort. The guild that held the fort could defend it and spend money to purchase guardian monsters to assist in the defence. The guild that held the fort was rewarded with loot on a daily basis.

Adding someting like this could open up a lot of content for the game. You would have FC vs FC PVP on a weekly basis. You could have a variety of recipes added for crafters to make automations and traps for defense. The rewards could be additional company actions, unique housing items, even temporary buffs for other PVE content that gets stronger the more people from the same FC are in the party.

Well I heard that during one of these patches that they were suppose to allow us to enter in CT with premade parties. Maybe they are saving it for the new CT add ons. I hope so. I would also like some old school FFXI Dynamis type content.

Ragnarok online got this right.

I dont think I want FC specific content, unless they add in some kind of alliance function to let FC's team up together. My FC uses an LS to talk rather than fc chat, because we have people from all over in our group which aren't in the fc with us. Those ls members come to coil with us, hang out in our house/s with us (there are multiples of us with a house in teh same area), do events together. I dont see why raid groups feel they have to be in an FC together to function. All it gets you is a tag, a daily buff or two, and house usage.

Wouldnt making content to be done with FCs specifically only encourage the cliques and give no reason to socialise outside of it?

16 man content (2 full parties) would be ok for FC contents, I think. It would be just 1 person more than what we had as a full party before it got reduced to 8, but 15 people only for leves or behest was really too many. Big parties need content for big parties, or 50% of the party watch how the other 50% do all the work.