Grand Companies

[Kalise]

Any higher and they'll start expecting us to submit actual paperwork.

No, but really, some of the higher ranks almost seem like they'd be better off reserved for special NPCs.

Well, they already have additional ranks in the game data. So they're expecting to eventually let us rank higher. It's merely a matter of when.

As far as becoming pencil pushers... We still have the likes of Kan-E-Senna who gets involved in the action not infrequently. As well as Raubahn who only started taking a backseat because he suffered a bit of an injury to one of his arms... Who was then taken over by Vice Marshal Pipin as the front of the Flames army (Thus lead the attack onto Ala Mhigo).

It honestly wouldn't make sense for companies to let their best soldiers promote themselves to a point where they no longer fight on the battlefield. Why would you intentionally weaken your forces by having good fighters only sit back and strategize? Why wouldn't you want soldiers who were good at strategizing to ALSO be in the field so as to adapt to the situation and form new plans in response to the opposition's actions?

It's like at the Grand Melee in Ishgard, where you had the likes of Raubahn and Aymeric in the field and they were giving people orders on the fly as well as being strong fighters in of themselves.

Especially when you're going to be dealing with enemies that have powerful combatants among their number. Unless your plan to deal with people like Zenos is hope that you have enough recruits to send at him until he gives up for some reason >.>

[Daralii]

Well, they already have additional ranks in the game data. So they're expecting to eventually let us rank higher. It's merely a matter of when.

As far as becoming pencil pushers... We still have the likes of Kan-E-Senna who gets involved in the action not infrequently. As well as Raubahn who only started taking a backseat because he suffered a bit of an injury to one of his arms... Who was then taken over by Vice Marshal Pipin as the front of the Flames army (Thus lead the attack onto Ala Mhigo).

It honestly wouldn't make sense for companies to let their best soldiers promote themselves to a point where they no longer fight on the battlefield. Why would you intentionally weaken your forces by having good fighters only sit back and strategize? Why wouldn't you want soldiers who were good at strategizing to ALSO be in the field so as to adapt to the situation and form new plans in response to the opposition's actions?

It's like at the Grand Melee in Ishgard, where you had the likes of Raubahn and Aymeric in the field and they were giving people orders on the fly as well as being strong fighters in of themselves.

Especially when you're going to be dealing with enemies that have powerful combatants among their number. Unless your plan to deal with people like Zenos is hope that you have enough recruits to send at him until he gives up for some reason >.>

Unless linkpearls aren't working, there's no need for characters to be acting as field commanders unless they have reason to believe something extremely dangerous is being fielded by the enemy. I'm pretty sure Raubahn was also acting as supreme allied commander in Ghimlyt, which is why Aymeric, Kan-E-Senna, Pipin, etc were on the field while he was staying behind at camp.

[Kalise]

Unless linkpearls aren't working, there's no need for characters to be acting as field commanders unless they have reason to believe something extremely dangerous is being fielded by the enemy.

Last I checked, people couldn't see what was happening through linkpearls.

There's still a lot of merit of having field commanders. Being able to see what is happening to be able to direct forces. Being a strong fighter to help mitigate losses by clearing out more of the "Fodder" enemies. Being a huge morale boost for your troops. Being able to deal with threats as they appear (For example, do you think just sending a message over linkpearl to people in Rhalgr's Reach to GTFO would have stopped Zenos and the Imperials from slaughtering everyone if the WoL wasn't there to engage him to at the very least, buy time for others to retreat?)

This is a setting where combat ability matters a lot. Retiring to become an armchair general is not a good tactic unless something happens to limit your combat potential (Such as losing an entire arm, which is literally the only reason Raubahn doesn't get involved. He wants to, but he cannot because he's not strong enough any more).

This is also implying linkpearls are actually used. Yet after say, Ghimlyt, everyone returns to Raubahn to inform him of what happened, so he can plan out the next move... To say nothing of Alisae deciding herself to press the attack with WoL, Hien and Yugiri. Acting field commander taking charge of the situation as it changed rather than linkpearling to "Supreme Allied Commander" Raubahn to notify him of the situation and let him give the order to press on... (With the call happening and then the further acting field commander decisions to pull back and report to Raubahn and get Alisae to safety)

And again, THEY LITERALLY HAVE THE DATA FOR 8 MORE RANKS FOR US TO ATTAIN.

In the game code, they have the ranks, including their insignia's already there. It's not like I'm guessing about additional ranks, they literally have the data for:

Second Storm/Flame/Serpent Commander
First Storm/Flame/Serpent Commander
High Storm/Flame/Serpent Commander
Rear Storm/Flame/Serpent Marshal
Vice Storm/Flame/Serpent Marshal (The same rank as Pipin)
Storm/Flame/Serpent Marshal
Grand Storm/Flame/Serpent Marshal
Storm/Flame/Serpent Champion

Implying they have plans to allow us to eventually get promoted. Likely not being merely a pencil pusher role, because that wouldn't make any sense for our characters.

[Hasrat]

Alternative theory: the ranks are simply displayed as a bit of lore, to communicate to the player the military structure. It wouldn't make sense to be promoted to pencil pusher, but from a gameplay perspective, it also doesn't entirely make sense to be ranked so high that you should in theory have potentially hundreds of troops under your command. At a certain point, I would start to expect our military position to become more demanding than our status as WoL.

I don't strictly think you're wrong. Like you said, the ranks are there already. It's not out of the question that devs would have more content planned in their unlocking. But at the same time, personally, the idea of our wee adventurer selves someday outranking someone like Pipin seems strange. It's one thing to balance our adventurer lifestyle with a bit of military grunt work. But it feels like a stretch that us sellswords would find ourselves in a higher position than dedicated military individuals.

[MorbolvampireQueen6]

What is the highest atm i cant seem to get up after the 80k seal max

[Daralii]

What is the highest atm i cant seem to get up after the 80k seal max

Captain. Complete 5 unique command missions, and then you should get a flagged squadron mission.

[LalaRu]

...they have plans to allow us to eventually get promoted....

Imagine the promotion tied to some PvP activity... something like that may be seen with rolling eyes but makes sense, we are talking of military ranks.

[Kalise]

I don't strictly think you're wrong. Like you said, the ranks are there already. It's not out of the question that devs would have more content planned in their unlocking. But at the same time, personally, the idea of our wee adventurer selves someday outranking someone like Pipin seems strange. It's one thing to balance our adventurer lifestyle with a bit of military grunt work. But it feels like a stretch that us sellswords would find ourselves in a higher position than dedicated military individuals.

On the other hand, as a random adventurer, it would seem odd becoming such a high ranking officer in the military.

However, as the Warrior of Light, we've more than proven ourselves capable of leading forces as we've done it time and time again. To say nothing of cleaning up the messes that the Grand Companies find themselves in (Such as clearing out Haukke Manor, twice, and clearing out Halatali. Even back as a wee adventurer we were going above and beyond Grand Company troops to tackle the Primals)

You'd think of it as more like an honorary role though. Whereby it affords us a level of respect and access to supplies/troops/missions. But doesn't take on the whole role, with the paperwork and level of command (I.e. We'd not be ordering Pipin around even if we outranked him for example)

Allowing us to attain lofty ranks within the military given our abilities and our commitment, but limiting our reach based on the fact that we're not full time soldiers, so we still perform duties like essentially grunts under the command of notable military figures such as Pipin, Raubahn, Aymeric, Hien, Yugiri etc. Just, it would make a little more sense when we're put in charge of a small platoon or company of soldiers while raiding some Imperial stronghold or some such (While dressed in swanky officer uniforms)

[BillyKaplan]

On the other hand, as a random adventurer, it would seem odd becoming such a high ranking officer in the military.

However, as the Warrior of Light

Even as random adventurers, we've more than proven ourselves. We didn't do any of the quests for the GC as the WoL, but as that GC's soldiers. Many dungeons in the game are not actually tied to the MSQ or our status as WoL, but are still adventures and feats we've accomplished. We've cleared their hunting logs, we've performed supply and provision missions, we probably did a couple of leves for the sake of it. Heck even some MSQ dungeons are us being more adventurers than WoL, as 4.1 liked to remind us with that fun expedition with Alphinaud and Arenvald.
Us as Adventurers make more than enough sense that we get promoted, especially once we were given the squad. While the gameplay doesn't reflect that, we're supposed to have raised them and trained them and carefully decided on their composition, and their success merits the GC promoting us more.

Meanwhile the WoL must never have associated so tightly with any GC in the first place. As Scions of the Seventh Dawn, we're supposed to remain neutral and not favor any single City State or its GC. Which they could've sort of accomplished by letting us unlock all GCs at once and then maintain balance not by shunning everyone, but accepting everyone, but instead we're still locked and obligated to one military force which is strictly against the Scions' policies.

[Kalise]

Meanwhile the WoL must never have associated so tightly with any GC in the first place. As Scions of the Seventh Dawn, we're supposed to remain neutral and not favor any single City State or its GC. Which they could've sort of accomplished by letting us unlock all GCs at once and then maintain balance not by shunning everyone, but accepting everyone, but instead we're still locked and obligated to one military force which is strictly against the Scions' policies.

True, from a Scion perspective, they should unlock all 3 GC's for us to work for. I mean, it's already possible to pretty easily swap between them, it just costs 50k gil each time. Doesn't even reset your rank for a GC...

That said, from a Scion perspective, we've actually been helping the GC's put aside their differences and work together as a whole. Basically with every interaction from HW and onwards with GC's has been in the form of the Eorzean Alliance, consisting of all 3 GC's and eventually Ishgard's Temple Knights and Doma's Shinobi (Or Enclave Guard).

Honestly, the only real thing that would seem to be preventing just allowing us open access to work for all 5 members of the Alliance, are due to the inexplicable nature of GC seals being named. (That and trying to prevent us from having multiple squadrons to... Farm XP/Gil boosters on a weekly basis?). Perhaps also a small issue with the Wind-Up Leader minion? (Though, that could surely just be split into the 3 minions it summons based on GC affiliation...)

Though, it does bring up something interesting as a design point for when they get around to introducing the rest of the ranks.

Like, if they do open up all of the Alliance Militaries for us to work for. Changing Seals to be generic seals (Or "Alliance Seals" if you wish) and allowing us to work our way up the ranks of The Maelstrom, The Order of the Twin Adder, The Immortal Flames, The Temple Knights and Doma's Shinobi/Enclave Guards. That would be neat. Opening up 2 new themes of items from the HW/SB members. Along with some more achievements and titles.

That, in addition to allowing us to get higher ranks, would give a ton of content within the GC's, which has for a large part, been neglected for a while... (Especially Company Chocobo's...) With only relatively minor additions infrequently (Such as the last rank added in 4.4 that added... Some new weapons to buy and 10k higher seal cap)

All in a way that would fit in better with our role as a Scion, where we have to remain unbiased, as well as our "Everybody be friends" attitude that we bring to the members.