Best way to recruit for new FC?

[Katlyna]

The secret to inviting people is in having a winning personality and having a slick website, magazine, facebook or some other way for players to SEE something proving your free company exists and looks fun. I won't lie I have the advantage of being a leader in a large Free company which is exceptionally well know. None the less I've built guilds in other games from bottom up.

In FFXIV you want to first have a very nice but planned approach, general conversation and baited question (proposing an invite), followed with a link for more information. All of my BEST invites were driven through fate groups or idle chatter in main cities. Often times I approach people and <tie ribbons in their hair>, <bobble a wiggly nana bear in their face>, <take pictures of their cute outfit>, or some other silly but non-evasive emote. This usually follows with partying with them doing fates, or talking to them in /say or /whisper. After seeing how they respond in general conversation I will ask if they've been in a company recently, and if they're looking for another, and that they are a fun/interesting/silly/cool person who would be great in our FC. Again I'm trying to generally compliment them before trying to sell them on the importance of my company itself. Most people will respond maybe, not interested, or kind of looking at X right now. I pretty much universally follow this with a comment that "You should totally check out Terra @ website if you have some time. I would totally be happy to invite/kidnap you and your friends." I ALWAYS in my followup statement add "you and your friends" most people travel with others and so when joining a new FC they want themselves and their friends to be welcome. Sometimes I'll chat a bit more with them, and often times they'll add me as a friend or I'll add them (if they're ok with it). Most of the time people will NOT join up during the conversation itself. Rather I end up hearing back from them an hour or two later and they want to join up or apply.

While this approach requires investment the people who end up joining genuinely feel like the FC might be worth their time. And odds are if you are fostering this type of approach, its quite likely the people you have and are inviting are happy cool people to be around (and shows in your FC itself). This is exactly how we operate in Terra and how I try to teach our officers to approach others.

As for finding people I generally pick out midlevel and higher zones where fates occur, and do fates while looking out for people without FC tags. Costa de Sol is a favorite of mine for doing this. But I also keep an eye out for people in the trade alleys in big cities and gear exchanges places like Idyllshire and Mor Dhona.

I absolutely never do /shout or /partyfinder. And if I search for people using the social feature I zone into their area and find them in person before engaging them.

[StriderShinryu]

Grow slowly, be sure of your recruits and treat everyone fairly and family friendly. As you grow, your FC will be solid and your members will be loyal to each other.

This is actually really important. In the guilds I've run in the past, I made sure to actually know every single member. You have to ask yourself if you want a real functional close knit guild or just a nameless horde.

[Wizel__]

i'm a FC leader myself and we don't actively recruit (even not in the building phase as we did split from another FC that actually did fill their ranks with all the said warm bodies and it felt unpersonal). now it's just friends bringing friends, bringing friends,... and i gotta say that it works. so what worked for me is having a small crowd that then evolves by itself. obviously with still open recruitment for randoms for those that want to join us by themself. i don't want to just fill our ranks with "faceless nobodies", i want peaople that join us because they wanna be exactly here.

[Anzaman]

As I said, this likely varies. The few people I've sent tells to were new players that I thought needed help and, in my case, they messaged me back and thanked me for sending the message and not just outright inviting them without a word.

I was about level 20 when I got whisper from my FC's leader, it wasn't some plain long FC-recruitment message, and instead approached me on more personal level.

I've now been about 10 months in that Free Company, and have reached the position of Officer.

[SXTC]

Isn't recruitment through PF against TOS?

[Vidu]

Isn't recruitment through PF against TOS?

not afaik - on what grounds would it be?

[supaiku]

I don't know if this has been already mentioned or if this is even important to people, but something that triggers me when I see people advertising their fc is when their language has a lot of mistakes.
English is not my native language so I don't know how it is with english speaking fcs, but a lot of the time I see german people advertise their fc and they ignore the basic rules of the german language. If I would still search for a fc, I definetly wouldn't apply to these groups. But maybe that's just me, lol.

[Super_Bee_Brian]

Party finder and shouts combined with a lot of patience. You may get a couple people join in a day, or no one.
Or those flaky people that will join and leave within a couple of hours.

Don't send /tells to people to join your FC, as that is very annoying. There's enough gil seller spam, players don't need fc recruitment /tells on top of that.

Good luck with your FC!

I've recruited all 20 of my FC mates through tells. How is it annoying?

[Thamorian]

I've recruited all 20 of my FC mates through tells. How is it annoying?

This posts is two and a half years old. I'd be surprised if you get an answer. Necromancy was used to bring back this rotten corpse of a post lol.

[Super_Bee_Brian]

This posts is two and a half years old. I'd be surprised if you get an answer. Necromancy was used to bring back this rotten corpse of a post lol.

Wasted my time...