I agree. There is pretty 0 reason to have Free Companies because of the fact that you can just put everyone into a linkshell and every person have their own Free Company for extra bag space.
Until there is a reasonable alternative to lockout issue, this will remain. Many, many, MANY players said CT loot lockout would be good. However if it was so good, SE would have already implemented it. So it's pretty obvious that it's a terrible solution. I personally believe that lockouts are justified when there are many instances that all have lockouts but all have relevant gear to be obtained. For example, if in 3.0 they add 3 different new raids; Dungeon A, a 8 man encounter with 5 bosses and some trash inbetween; Dungeon B, a variable 8~12 man encounter with 4 bosses and no trash; Dungeon C, a 24 man encounter with 4 bosses. All dungeons would yield gear that is on par with each other and gives differing stats, traits, what have you.2: Remove or reduce the lockout. I know you said you are looking at a way to implement this and I hope you stay true to your word. Allowing us to enter 2-3 times a week would be a huge improvement. Personally I've found getting a static harder than the actual content since second coil was introduced.
This kind of thinking hinges greatly on the ability of Naoki to bring in horizontal progression. I also believe gear should only have a maximum lifetime of 15 months, after that it should really show that one needs to upgrade.
In some sense, this is a good idea. The way it should likely work is this (speculation), Third Coil is tuned for i110 for first two turns, i118+ for the latter but for a full 8 man party. You can go in with less but chance of success will drop exponentially. If they carry this kind of thing on then it's fine. I'd like to express that I don't believe that 7 great people should be able to clear Third Coil, or any subsequent raid, at the minimally tuned item level. I fully believe if you went into the first two turns at i110 with only 7 people that you should basically fail outright. However, this still falls back to the lockout problem.3: Remove number requirements. Again, FFXI did this well. Most content can be cleared with lower numbers, So why are you making us take 8 people to something that can be cleared with 6 or 7? If one person doesn't show up, It disrupts the entire event for 7 other people or you have to take a person who you are uncertain can actually perform in the raid.
This is harder to do because of the nature of the loot we get. It's 100% chance to have something drop and, while it may not be what the players need at the time, it is likely the reason why lockouts exist in the first place. Adding more content would alleviate this problem a little more but still probably cause some other problem, although I don't know what that could be. The only idea I can think of is like in FFIX where you binded your gear to obtain the skills, but limit the binding to specific encounters? I think it would cause more annoyance than joy and might even start a whole new slew of elitism.4: Keep content relevant. Every patch all the gear we grinded for becomes irrelevant due to new content, If you kept some things the same ilvl, we would have more than 1 event to do each week plus all the gear we gain feels like more of an accomplishment. Refering back to FFXI yet again, You had several events that were worth doing a week which made you log in every day. It seems that towards the end of each patch, people login in just for coil then logout until next reset, because there's nothing else to do.
As it stands my static is only 3/8 wanting to do savage. The 5 that don't have all the exact same reasoning, "doesn't give better loot than current coil so it's a waste of time.".5: Add harder content which is worth doing. Savage was a great idea, but I think more people would attempt it if the rewards were greater than what you get from normal coil.
Word on the grape vine is that savage Coil is a massive failure. People, SE included, failed to realize that people don't continue to raid after first completion because of challenge. First clear of everything eliminates the challenge. So such a foolish decision to implement a harder mode with exactly the same loot was expected to fail.