I don't think we have enough incentives to join/stay in Free Companies

Hey, I'm opening this thread because I'm in a genuine struggle lately and I really don't understand if at this point it's just me or it's a game related issue. I'm the owner of a very small FC, and we have some occasional players and some all-year subbed raiders. Problem is, while we normally hang out via other games, somehow it feels like there's nothing "fc-related" that's worth doing all together. Literally, it feels like the only content we can do together is... roulettes and maps? Idk, Limsa's ocean fishing? Content that everyone can run through duty/party finder anyways without having to necessarily belong to our fc?
It's been since I started playing this game, but I feel like compared to other MMOs there's no real need to be in an FC to do anything, which is good I guess, it avoids to gatekeep content, but at the same time isn't it bad that there's no real incentive to play in one?
I'm feeling this dilemma being kind of heavy lately especially due to me spending so much time in Light with our part of FC who's really into raiding, while we go back at Chaos, we maybe run roulettes together with everyone else, from time to time we might do maps, but then again, maybe mount farming, but we're kinda trying to squeeze these things because otherwise there's no real incentive in doing things together, not as a FC anyways... I do the same on other DCs with friends without really belonging anywhere :(
I was thinking, couldn't we have some type of in-game activity that's specifically tied to Free Companies? Like having something like FC leaderboards being also tied to content like Firmament/Diadem, Eureka, Bozja, all activities that normally it's already funnier to do together, Idk. I'm just putting out very simple inputs, but if you have suggestions it's really good. I think this type of stuff would not necessarily set up any fomo to stay subbed, but might push fc members into working together for something, Idk, some gamers just like dem shiny numbers. Rankings for gc seals are kinda dumb to me because especially on my DC there's just a lot of people botting to stay on top and they don't really need to work for anything, but that's another type of conversation I guess.
TL;DR: Am I the only one that wishes FC had some guild-type of activities/incentives to play together? Do you have any suggestions regarding this? ;-;

It's a game issue. FCs are completely irrelevant for the most part. They focused on making the game so solo focused and accessible they killed off the social aspect of the game outside raids. Even maps, just join a PF party, no need to talk or coordinate.

yeah. in ff14 its just whatever. no point in having a guild / friend list with nice and reliable players.
here you just sign up, do a boring ass dungeon in 15min and thats it.

A real conundrum, huh? On the one hand, make the reward too lame and nobody's going to care. Make it too good, and people will be crying that they're missing out and you're giving power-tripping guild leaders even more pull.

You are right that the game isn't hugely FC centric and others have expressed this as something they perceive as a problem. You can get by without an FC even (I think this is good as you said because some people are loners and don't want to be gatekept). I think it's fairly common for MMOs to add guilds as an afterthought - some exp bonuses, a chat, little incentives for new players to join and not much else.

It used to be more needed for raiding because of PFs not being cross-world in Heavensward, so some worlds were actually dead and had no PFs and on the most busy worlds you could run into the same people that trapped you.

But there are many active FCs and these are the sort of activities they do together (you listed many of them):

• Mount farming
• Maps
• Forming a static together or otherwise doing high-end raids together
• Alliance raid (usually doing it together on release days)
• RP events or venues
• Decorating a house together
• Just talking/joking in the chat or exchanging advice
• Doing roulettes together, whether leveling jobs or tomestones
• Doing PvP together
• I don't normally see this, but since you mentioned it, I've seen odd friends group (very rarely) do Eureka together.

Usually no FC does all of those things, but rather some of them. Mine does most of them because it's large. It's heavily contingent on event organizers and people with initiative to start chatting and organize events, otherwise they don't happen.

The only things designed specifically for an FC as far as I can remember are:

• FC buffs to motivate being in the FC to do things.
• FC rooms to motivate being at the FC house to interact.
• Airships and Diadem (but Diadem has been changed since then).

As for leaderboards, the only ones I can think of are on the lodestone, which show various activity lists of what your FC members are doing.

Personally i actually like the fact that there is no "guild only" activity because not everyone likes the Social Aspect especially in ffxiv (the times i saw chat only guildes is incredible, i miss the old mmo times where voice was a obligation) and like previous poster already said you have enough activity i mean yea you can do the same in PF but isnt the reason to join a FC because you wanna do all that stuff with friends?

I think some of the GW2 guild quests could be an interesting idea, I liked that a guild could start it and others could join it (I free loaded a few times lol). One of the potential contents I suggested in some thread around here was Hamlets for FC. Where the FC would get its own Dark Cloud (playstation game) hamlet, kind of a housing ward, where they get a substantial number of progression mechanics and systems. Just like hamlet defense in 1.0, you'd also have combat components.



So you would be gaining reputation for your guild in different cities, agencies, and people, that would then unlock new recipes, structures, features, and individuals at your hamlet. You would be attacking NPC 'hamlets' (strongholds) like in FFXI besiege, and you would be defending yours. Potentially may also have an opportunity to have FC vs FC pvp (definitely make that optional in some way).


Just like freeloading special events in GW2, here if your FC was not established or you were a lone wolf, you could find a FC that opens their doors to share in their content. Potentially also this means that a FC couldn't have ALL options active all at once, to further just encourage that. Like if you have the Garlond Ironworks set up you wont have space for the Crystal Forge (or whatever). A guild may at some point unlock them all, but they would have to cycle options (with timers added)- as to not be so painful that you're SoL but restrictive enough that you might look at the directory of other places if you needed a service.

The game sadly is not constructed from the ground up to facilitate the formation of FCs.

On FF11 the game was really tough after level 10, and you had to use the /sea function and form a 2-3 hour long levelling party to continue past that. You have to be active in talking to people to form or get into that party, if you are a wallfly standing around with your invite flag on then you will never get invited and progress unless you are a white mage. Logging in night after night, eventually you start recgonizing the same names, people who are on the same leg of their journey as you, so you form a linkshell (guild) to progress together and it grew from there. As early as level 20 you are forming 18 man alliances to take on the level 25 bandersnatches and skeletons in Gusgen Mines to spend 2 hours farming magicked skulls for everyone to unlock their subjob. And then your farming coffer keys to get every linkshell member's job armor, or doing the story missions together, or farming the BCNMs. You can't solo in this game. Once you reached level 30 you could unlock beastmaster and then slowly level by yourself, but you still had to do the story BCNM fights and the level uncap quests with other people.

Problem with FF14 is that the game never forces you to party up and form guilds from the get go. The moment to moment experience is not exping with other people and chatting during the low APM combat and during downtime, but instead watching cutscenes, running to the next cutscene, or ocassionally doing solo instances. You don't need a party to survive the overworld or to level up. When you need to do a dungeon you just queue for it, no talking to people required. You get teleported and sprint through it, and it is a high APM pseudo action game and there is no downtime between pulls so people have no time to talk, and then everyone goes their seperate ways and never sees each other again. People go through the 400+ hour long visual novel story and are conditioned to believe that they don't need anyone and to be passive and not socialize. That then leads to the pugging scene at level cap where you have solo players going into current content with a mercenary mentality of viewing everyone else as replaceable or as an obstacle rather than as a person.

Adding hard content that requires a party, like a hard field operation zone accessible by a new player from the get go that can take them to level 100, won't solve the problem. The main content of the game is still the singleplayer 400+ hour long visual novel, and it is also the path of least resistance to levelling up.

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Originally Posted by MoofiaBossVal

The game sadly is not constructed from the ground up to facilitate the formation of FCs.

On FF11 the game was really tough after level 10, and you had to use the /sea function and form a 2-3 hour long levelling party to continue past that. You have to be active in talking to people to form or get into that party, if you are a wallfly standing around with your invite flag on then you will never get invited and progress unless you are a white mage. Logging in night after night, eventually you start recgonizing the same names, people who are on the same leg of their journey as you, so you form a linkshell (guild) to progress together and it grew from there. As early as level 20 you are forming 18 man alliances to take on the level 25 bandersnatches and skeletons in Gusgen Mines to spend 2 hours farming magicked skulls for everyone to unlock their subjob. And then your farming coffer keys to get every linkshell member's job armor, or doing the story missions together, or farming the BCNMs. You can't solo in this game. Once you reached level 30 you could unlock beastmaster and then slowly level by yourself, but you still had to do the story BCNM fights and the level uncap quests with other people.

Problem with FF14 is that the game never forces you to party up and form guilds from the get go. The moment to moment experience is not exping with other people and chatting during the low APM combat and during downtime, but instead watching cutscenes, running to the next cutscene, or ocassionally doing solo instances. You don't need a party to survive the overworld or to level up. When you need to do a dungeon you just queue for it, no talking to people required. You get teleported and sprint through it, and it is a high APM pseudo action game and there is no downtime between pulls so people have no time to talk, and then everyone goes their seperate ways and never sees each other again. People go through the 400+ hour long visual novel story and are conditioned to believe that they don't need anyone and to be passive and not socialize. That then leads to the pugging scene at level cap where you have solo players going into current content with a mercenary mentality of viewing everyone else as replaceable or as an obstacle rather than as a person.

Adding hard content that requires a party, like a hard field operation zone accessible by a new player from the get go that can take them to level 100, won't solve the problem. The main content of the game is still the singleplayer 400+ hour long visual novel, and it is also the path of least resistance to levelling up.

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Yep, the game is borked for a true social multiplayer experience. I don't believe it is recoverable in this sense, the design is absolutely not geared towards this. I do hope a modern MMO similar in mechanics and gameplay to XI comes out one day. XI graphics and UI are just too outdated.

I would like FC to have a bigger impact because right now I have been FCless for sometime and honestly other then maybe RP I don't see the point in one

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Originally Posted by Ath192

Yep, the game is borked for a true social multiplayer experience. I don't believe it is recoverable in this sense, the design is absolutely not geared towards this. I do hope a modern MMO similar in mechanics and gameplay to XI comes out one day. XI graphics and UI are just too outdated.

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I wouldn't count on it. New MMO sustainability aside, the fact is that people have changed. A lot of people either want the convenience or--in some cases--don't want to be left out because of their inability to line up schedules. Life just isn't the same. People are more lonely for a reason and this is a symptom of it.

For an FC to survive content needs to exist that is.

1. Enjoyable
2. Repeatable
3. Composition flexible (Roles / Member Count)
4. New

Nothing exists that meets those.

Enjoyable because why would you do something you dont like.
Repeatable because once everyones got the mount / glam there's no reason to do it anymore. OR lockout preventing it in the first place.
Composition Flexible as a FC is a mix of people, some might not be online, or have the job.
New because if you've been around a few years Endwalker was sucking up all the past expansion content to get people through content drought, Mount/Glam Farm and Eureka for example.

I didnt bother mentioning maps since every map group (FC or otherwise) that I've been part of in Dawntrail didnt last thanks to it being a pile of bad RNG, Portal RNG, Door RNG, Loot RNG, all of which the odds are stacked against you.

Edit: Oh yes and you need members who are willing to step up and suggest activities they think would be interesting and not expect to be spoon fed everything, your FC organisers can't think of everything.

Its really sad, when i started that felt so different and yes, while personally i could do more for activity, its just nothing i want (contests, rp etc are just nothing i desire at all) and people are lazy. We lost many cause they wanted to make one with their statics, usually that didnt last too long. And the playerbase just feels different for a large part...

I was so happy about the Diadem back then, i was so devastated when they dropped it...

at the start of an expack the 1st month has larger buffs and at random I will make the larger buffs work on weekends and raid day but been lazy as of late the game has been boring and my fc has been quiet :3

Kinda like how FCs are now it's no pressure if there was pressure to it I wouldn't lead an FC at all I'm here to have fun.

I do lead one long enough, dealing with too many different personalities just sucks...

Also i forgot:
While its cool you can add more of them, it kinda sucks how we got the GC buffs to make up for the lack of FC buffs... it devalues FC'S even more.

do GC stack with FC buffs?

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Originally Posted by Ath192

Yep, the game is borked for a true social multiplayer experience. I don't believe it is recoverable in this sense, the design is absolutely not geared towards this. I do hope a modern MMO similar in mechanics and gameplay to XI comes out one day. XI graphics and UI are just too outdated.

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FFXI was niche even in its heyday. It wouldn't command anywhere close to the audience needed to justify the cost. People nowadays are simply too accustomed to matchmaking/instances and all the creature comforts alongside them. I can all but guarantee if XVII were an MMO like XI where having a party was required to go anywhere or do anything, it would die within the year.

You are correct. I helped my friend manage a community FC a while back. It was going okay. Then the game went four months with no new content update so a ton of people quit in the interim. Those who remained were fun to chill with, but then the new housing system came out and heavily incentivized solo-fc ownership, so a good chunk of those remaining people abandoned ship to chase their own solo-fc dream house. Then dynamis released, and a lot of people left for dynamis and had to leave our fc to do that. DC travel happened as well, and since this system doesn't support cross-dc chatter, it meant the few people we had left would log in, go to aether to raid, and effectively be offline to us. Finally one day it was just me online, so you know what I did? I quit and made my own solo fc. There's like no reason to be in a community fc anymore. If you try to make one work because you enjoy community building, good luck; everyone will just quit the game during a content drought or leave at 3 am without even saying goodbye because they (understandably) want to make a solo fc where they can get full control over buffs and decorations and submarines with no downside at all. Want to socialize? Join a CWLS. Speaking of, when will CWLSes have more than 64 slots? Come on man.

Tell me how you distribute your submarine loot, and I tell you why you have problems keeping people engaged.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

It's a game issue. FCs are completely irrelevant for the most part. They focused on making the game so solo focused and accessible they killed off the social aspect of the game outside raids. Even maps, just join a PF party, no need to talk or coordinate.

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This, this, this!! You can solo the game all the way to the end, they've taken the social aspect out of the game.

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Originally Posted by Zyama

This, this, this!! You can solo the game all the way to the end, they've taken the social aspect out of the game.

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I don't think it's entirely companies faults, I think a lot of people are stuck with the good ol days and reality is many don't actually want that anymore.

"Remember when I had to wait 45 minutes for a boat, to fly to Juno and shout for 3 hours to form a party" ahhhhh.... Those were the days! Lol

Now that doesn't mean not making social encouragement, I think that is important and I definitely think we could do quite a bit more. But I also think people want to be 'able' to stand in a crowd, feel like they're in a 'society' and not perform any special social interactions to do so.

I think players themselves have created in many ways the "o/" and "gg" is the only thing said the whole dungeon.

I've some ideas that might press against it.. but honestly I still think many want to be social without being social. Hence DF is so popular, and if you removed it and forced PF you'd probably be lambasted.

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Originally Posted by MoofiaBossVal

The game sadly is not constructed from the ground up to facilitate the formation of FCs.

On FF11 the game was really tough after level 10, and you had to use the /sea function and form a 2-3 hour long levelling party to continue past that. You have to be active in talking to people to form or get into that party, if you are a wallfly standing around with your invite flag on then you will never get invited and progress unless you are a white mage. Logging in night after night, eventually you start recgonizing the same names, people who are on the same leg of their journey as you, so you form a linkshell (guild) to progress together and it grew from there. As early as level 20 you are forming 18 man alliances to take on the level 25 bandersnatches and skeletons in Gusgen Mines to spend 2 hours farming magicked skulls for everyone to unlock their subjob. And then your farming coffer keys to get every linkshell member's job armor, or doing the story missions together, or farming the BCNMs. You can't solo in this game. Once you reached level 30 you could unlock beastmaster and then slowly level by yourself, but you still had to do the story BCNM fights and the level uncap quests with other people.

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That sounds awful. Forced socialization is bad and leads people to consider other players mere tools to facilitate their own progression, which in turn leads to toxicity whenever they underperform (go read the tales from df sub reddit to see how much people already focus on all the small mistakes that others do, rather than healthy socialization). Or simply look at chaotic raiding.

Additionally some people don't like to make excessive commitment towards other players and prefers others not to count on us so that we are completely free to stop playing or not to play regularly.

if there was a better way to send items to my alts then i wouldnt be in any free company, the only reason i made my FC was so i could send stuff to my alts without worrying about someone sniping it on the marketboard. i have a FC house but i dont use it for anything except for afking while i que for roulettes

Everything to do with FCs is a gameplay issue, more than anything.

Anything you can do with an FC, you can do just as conveniently through PF, or other means like community discords. Then you also have the issue that a lot of communities, even local FC ones, are typically just insular groups of people, or people that have formed their own clique, which is fine, but it doesn't go well because it does make it difficult to acclimate to an FC. Even the buffs are kind of... "ehh..." since you can get ones just as good as G3 buffs through the Squadron.

They did try making FC exclusive stuff, such as the original Diadem, but it didn't really bode well at the time, and after HW this game has been scared of innovating in any capacity, so it's more just maintaining status quo and keeping the treadmill running than it is about developing a social experience, or an environment that lends itself to such.

To make a FC viable you need to lock a lot of content to be group oriented or at least FF11 alike
Trust me, this forum would flood with river of tear if ever happened

Going to say it,

Recruiting fc members is way harder to recruit than ultimate static.

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Originally Posted by Zarkovitch

Going to say it,

Recruiting fc members is way harder to recruit than ultimate static.

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Also it would be great if there was a way to know if a player was trial or not, i've sent tells to people and never gotten replies and i'm fairly certain that's because they aren't able to, this needs to be fixed.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

FFXI was niche even in its heyday. It wouldn't command anywhere close to the audience needed to justify the cost. People nowadays are simply too accustomed to matchmaking/instances and all the creature comforts alongside them. I can all but guarantee if XVII were an MMO like XI where having a party was required to go anywhere or do anything, it would die within the year.

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If word got out about that aspect and it even got off the ground in the first place. MMOs have just moved beyond that. Back in 1999 with EQ and then XI patterned itself a lot off EQ when it came out in 2002, you didn't have things like random matchmaking and tools that allowed you to party up easily. So guilds in EQ (not sure what they were in IX) were essential. You were also locked to your own server in EQ. So the community you had there was the community available to you. The forced socialization aspect is what eventually drove so many away to EQII and WoW when they both came out the same month in 2004.

And there's plenty of opportunity for socialization in XIV. It's just socialization that players are given a choice in. I can't see modern MMO players who aren't already playing the games with forced socialization going back to that.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

If word got out about that aspect and it even got off the ground in the first place. MMOs have just moved beyond that. Back in 1999 with EQ and then XI patterned itself a lot off EQ when it came out in 2002, you didn't have things like random matchmaking and tools that allowed you to party up easily. So guilds in EQ (not sure what they were in IX) were essential. You were also locked to your own server in EQ. So the community you had there was the community available to you. The forced socialization aspect is what eventually drove so many away to EQII and WoW when they both came out the same month in 2004.

And there's plenty of opportunity for socialization in XIV. It's just socialization that players are given a choice in. I can't see modern MMO players who aren't already playing the games with forced socialization going back to that.

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A lot of people, devs and players, think that the drift from rigid socialization happened by accident or bad game choices, but in many ways players wanted it.


Like I don't want to be forced to find a group, I just want one thrust upon me when I ask for one- like an Uber lol. I don't want to chat 20 minutes after the dungeon, I want to go run some more content. IF I WANT to then I will, and you have given me the tools to do that. You're not missing it because you failed, you're missing it because people don't WANT to.


Those who are reminiscing about being forced into social situations, imo, should force themselves to. There are sometimes fair points like "I would if I could" and then maybe we have a problem, but when it's "I want you to have to do it too, even though you don't want to, I swear the thing I love you will love too" and it's like no, I don't love what you love - stop.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

A lot of people, devs and players, think that it happened by accident or bad game choices, but in many ways players wanted it.


Like I don't want to be forced to find a group, I just want one thrust upon me when I ask for one, like an Uber lol. I don't want to chat 20 minutes after the dungeon, I want to go run some more content. IF I WANT to then I will, and you have given me the tools to do that. You're not missing it because you failed, you missing it because people don't WANT to.


Those who are reminiscing about being forced into social situations, imo, should force themselves to. There are sometimes fair points like "I would if I could" and then maybe we have a problem, but when it's "I want you to have to do it too, even though you don't want to, I swear the thing I love you will love too" and it's like no, I don't love what you love - stop.

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Oh forced socialization in EverQuest was absolutely not on accident. It was part of The Vision from the developers.

And people who never experienced that really don't get why forced socialization is so bad. They go into Eureka or Bozja and they call for a groups for an hour or two, then go out and run some roulettes. They don't realize it was the *entire game* that was like that. Anything you wanted to do, you're wasting time just getting the group together or getting a spot in a group. You couldn't solo mobs if you weren't certain classes. And even with crafting, most materials came from mobs or group or raid content.

People can absolutely eschew Duty Finder and put all their parties together completely manually by going and talking to people or shouting in the zones. Nothing is stopping them. I challenge them to do that and nothing else (no crafting, no gathering, no Gold Saucer when you get bored of shouting) and see how entertaining it is.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Oh forced socialization in EverQuest was absolutely not on accident. It was part of The Vision from the developers.

And people who never experienced that really don't get why forced socialization is so bad. They go into Eureka or Bozja and they call for a groups for an hour or two, then go out and run some roulettes. They don't realize it was the *entire game* that was like that. Anything you wanted to do, you're wasting time just getting the group together or getting a spot in a group. You couldn't solo mobs if you weren't certain classes. And even with crafting, most materials came from mobs or group or raid content.

People can absolutely eschew Duty Finder and put all their parties together completely manually by going and talking to people or shouting in the zones. Nothing is stopping them. I challenge them to do that and nothing else (no crafting, no gathering, no Gold Saucer when you get bored of shouting) and see how entertaining it is.

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Ah sorry, I meant the drift from forced socialization. Players did not /like/ that. Edited for clarity.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

Even maps, just join a PF party, no need to talk or coordinate.

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And even that content is rendered excruciating by the party aspect. Waiting for people to join up, zone in, fly to their spot, open the map, open the chest, run to the next room, open that chest (twice), roll on loot, open the doors, scream over a rainbow in the first room, get kicked out of the second last room, type "aw shucks" in the chat like it's business as usual, and then sit around while someone suddenly detours to spend worthless tomestones.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Ah sorry, I meant the drift from forced socialization. Players did not /like/ that. Edited for clarity.

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Nope, the drift away from that was definitely not on accident. Post-EQ games made a point to have that as a feature. MMO players were tired of never being able to progress at their own pace.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

"Remember when I had to wait 45 minutes for a boat, to fly to Juno and shout for 3 hours to form a party" ahhhhh.... Those were the days! Lol

Now that doesn't mean not making social encouragement, I think that is important and I definitely think we could do quite a bit more. But I also think people want to be 'able' to stand in a crowd, feel like they're in a 'society' and not perform any special social interactions to do so.

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This, shouting for an hour to finally have a party with all relevant job to just do levelling.

Then become a race to online if your job is so common to that every one slot have 100s of people fighting for.

Or wait hours just to get enough people able to do a city to city run.

This is a great way of killing off MMO

if people are force to socialise because of content, that “society or community” will not last. I have go though few FC and finally settle down for one and I have been in since HW. We see people taking break but rarely anyone leave. Community should be a group of like minded come together. There might not be a lot of FC oriented activities but we just create ours, we form farming party, raid, from causal contents to high end, and sometimes we just find a spot in residential area and hangout.

Running a FC is not easy but it need people that willing to form a relationship to do it, forcing content will not form those bond

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Originally Posted by Nihiru__

TL;DR: Am I the only one that wishes FC had some guild-type of activities/incentives to play together? Do you have any suggestions regarding this? ;-;

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It would definitely be neat to have more built in goals for guilds to work towards but that aside, you can do nearly any content currently in the game with your FC members. You can also make your own little events to get people together like scavenger hunts, glam fashion shows, etc. The main factor is having the initiative to organize everything for your members. Running a successful guild is a lot of work in any MMO.

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Originally Posted by Zarkovitch

Recruiting fc members is way harder to recruit than ultimate static.

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The community finder is surprisingly helpful in that regard.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

But there are many active FCs and these are the sort of activities they do together (you listed many of them):

• Mount farming
• Maps
• Forming a static together or otherwise doing high-end raids together
• Alliance raid (usually doing it together on release days)
• RP events or venues
• Decorating a house together
• Just talking/joking in the chat or exchanging advice
• Doing roulettes together, whether leveling jobs or tomestones
• Doing PvP together
• I don't normally see this, but since you mentioned it, I've seen odd friends group (very rarely) do Eureka together.

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All very true. My FC does many of those things together. I think the issue with FCs in general is that you don't need an FC to do any of those things. Forgive me for using FFXI as a comparison, but in early iterations of that game, we had linkshells, and you could use one at a time. Many players in a "raiding linkshell" mostly just kept that one active.

It was hard to find people to do missions together without shouting in Jeuno for hours.
It was hard to find people to do dynamis together without shouting in Jeuno for hours.
It was hard to find people to do sky/sea/salvage together without shouting in Jeuno for hours.

In the case of sky and sea, these weren't one day, one hour raids. You had to farm items to spawn the enemies that dropped the better loot. So, you wouldn't want to farm this stuff with randoms, who would just take the pop item and go spawn the sky gods with other people.

The point is - we have duty finder and party finder. That handles pretty much that entire list. The FC buffs are minor at best, in my opinion. In my case, I stay in my FC because I like the people and I like doing content with the people who are there. And I suppose that is enough.

FCs are perfect they way they are - a tool for groups of people to have fun together. If it was mandatory for anything meaningful it would've turned FCs into a toxic environment too often. While most people are nice, the exact worse people for being FC leaders would also be the most numerous, and fighting over FC houses would've been even worse. Heck, one could argue that having an FC house is a huge advantage if you know how to work with submarines.


I have many ideas on how to improve this and other aspects of the game but i'll reserve that for those who care enough to listen.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Partially related, but I went through 4 free companies before giving up and making my own because it felt like the only reason to be in one (on Maduin at least) was to make gil via airships/submarines, but none of that was ever going to trickle down from the leader or their closest officers, and promotions for greater FC feature access of any kind were never going to happen. (Understandable of course, given you don't want just anybody being able to do anything they want lest it cause irreparable damage.)

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You bring up an interesting point. Our FC bank has 30 million gil sitting in it from the airships. I don't really have an easy way to distribute this to the current FC members without completely unlocking the bank, which is risky. It was ostensibly there for our interior design team to be able to buy anything they needed the last time they renovated the house. But until the lead designer gets another bee in her bonnet or inspo from HGTV, it's just sitting there doing nothing.

Do you have any ideas of what could be good resources to purchase with that money to share it with the FC?

Should I send every guild member a million gil? I think most of them are on my friend's list.

We run screenshot competitions from time to time and hand out Gil that way. Could also spend it on rare minions and leave them in an open tab of the chest for people to take, like at christmas. We used to have a giveaway bot in our discord that we'd use so people could go in the draw for rare items. Thavnairian onions from the garden would go in an open tab of the chest.

I agree it would be nice to have some fc specific activities in game. How about your own potd in the fc house basement for fc members to use or something like that. It would be fun to collectively explore it and bring back rewards from under the house

Never has been a reason to stay in FC, Every single one i've joined only the leader and their officers get any benefit while everyone else is shafted. They will never flow the rewards downwards for any exploration task but will want you to help craft components or help fund the acquisition.

FC's are just drama hubs, One such example;

I used to be part of one where people would marry every single week, Like nonstop just marriages. My buddy got proposed to by one of the officers and i jokingly said i'm gunna steal him from her.

Queue the most unhinged tantrum, Luckily she was only an "Officer" on the discord so i had time to submit evidence to our Guild Leader and she looked like a wackjob but still. That is very common behavior, You don't play along with their nonsense onesided harem fantasy and suddenly you're satan.

I've never married anyone in any video game, I think the concept is useless aside from Roleplayers utilizing it. I wouldn't want to share a house with some random online, nor any storage.

When they don't have Drama they have nonsense like "Participation requirements" you must submit (X) to be part of the FC, Which is another red flag but they always seem to have the most members which i'll never understand, Why waste your time so little timmie (Leader) can play like a streamer?

Solo gameplay with access to NN is better than any FC i've joined, This is my PC account think i joined in 2023? My PS4 account was around during stormblood, Even back then only FC i joined and didn't have problems with was a private FC with a coworker and his wife. Every other one i've joined since has been nonsense, Like middle school but you know these are grown adults.