[Request] Free Companies need some updates

[BunnyChain]

• FC chest:
  1. /isearch
  2. sortable(?)
  3. right click to put stuff in/out
  4. combine all 3 tabs into 1 (visually at least)
• global/serverwide FC board to find FCs on your server
• FC crafting without needing 4 ppl

[LillithCale]

Are Free Companies still relevant?

With crossworld linkshells etc?

As a FC leader, I'd rather SE move away from tying more features to FCs.

Buffs can and should be obtainable from the Grand Companies.

Things like the Airships/Submarines/Workshop etc should be made available for individual player access. For example:

Skysteel Manufactory in Ishgard for Airships
Kugane/Limsa for Submarines

Anecdotally, having played on Tonberry,Levi,Cactuar and now on Balmung, I don't think that besides the FC leader and their inner circle, normal FC members get the benefits of things like Airships or can actively participate in such FC content.

Maybe my Free Company is an outlier but we actively involve the members with the Subs and Airships and do weekly raffles for the items they bring back. Some of them we even just give away or put in the chest for members they take as they please. Is that really so odd?

[Xatsh]

Are Free Companies still relevant?

With crossworld linkshells etc?

As a FC leader, I'd rather SE move away from tying more features to FCs.

Buffs can and should be obtainable from the Grand Companies.

Things like the Airships/Submarines/Workshop etc should be made available for individual player access. For example:

Skysteel Manufactory in Ishgard for Airships
Kugane/Limsa for Submarines

Anecdotally, having played on Tonberry,Levi,Cactuar and now on Balmung, I don't think that besides the FC leader and their inner circle, normal FC members get the benefits of things like Airships or can actively participate in such FC content.

I disagree greatly on this one.



Are Free Company relevant... Hell no they are pointless and that is one of the biggest problems in ffxiv. If anything SE should be adding things to Free Companys (guilds) to encourage people to join into them and grow them. Honestly there should be some endgame elements tied directly too free company that are actually relevant. Things in a Free company should add direct benefit to members, be it accessing restricted content, rare buffs, or accessing special bosses. Atm FC's are literally only chat channels with pointless buffs, which is not what a guild should be in any mmo. Basically you have a choice of being a social guild, or a very social guild, or an ultra social guild. There is no event guilds, endgame guilds, and so on. Guilds are way too 1 dimensional.



Out of all the mmos I played when I ran guilds. FFXI, WoW, Aion, AA, ffxiv has the worst guild support of any mainstream mmo I played, it does need to be addressed. But not by removing stuff or letting it rot entirely.. that is the exact opposite of what should be done.

[LillithCale]

Nudging this to keep it alive

[TwistedTea]

Maybe my Free Company is an outlier but we actively involve the members with the Subs and Airships and do weekly raffles for the items they bring back. Some of them we even just give away or put in the chest for members they take as they please. Is that really so odd?

Honestly there should be some endgame elements tied directly too free company that are actually relevant. Things in a Free company should add direct benefit to members, be it accessing restricted content, rare buffs, or accessing special bosses. Atm FC's are literally only chat channels with pointless buffs, which is not what a guild should be in any mmo.

My post is not a knock on good FC leaders who distribute the proceeds of an FC house.

But the fact remains, that FC houses and by extension,things like Airships and Submarines are restricted access for many normal FC members.

Such features can bring in 5-10 million gil a week, if not more.

I think, it's not fair that very few people have access to such significant gil producing assets. Which is why, I'm in favour of individual access to such features.

People create shell FCs for that reason.

Secondly, if and when new housing is released,judging by past trends, FCs will get first dibs on buying plots.

Is this fair to individual buyers?

To not get a plot they wanted because someone created a shell FC to buy a house?

Heck, SE still has not closed the loophole that enables a single service account to own 8 FC houses on a server.

In addition, under the current system, you don't even need FC members when working on FC projects; just 3 other players with at least 1 level one crafter. They don't even have to be from your home server,they can also be trial account characters...

In short, I don't trust SE when it comes to adding new FC features/content. SE will probably leave loopholes, which will be gamed for individual benefit.

[Fawkes]

I would like to be able to join other FCs as a linkshell.

For example, there's a FC that I'd like to chat with on another server. I suppose I could try to convince all of them to exclusively talk in a CW linkshell just to talk to me, but that seems like a hard sell. Most people seem to prefer talking in FC chat and having two separate chats for all the same people can be a bother. It would be much better if a FC could accept chat-only members that saw the FC chat as a CW linkshell.

I have no idea if the way things are coded would actually allow for this, but I'd like it if it's possible.

[Katie_Kitty]

How about a reason for existing in the first place? FCs in this game are so pointless and do nothing but make "leaders" feel important. Maybe something related to PvP would be nice - an FC combat mode perhaps? If they added some PvP like that that encourages people to go in as organized groups then an FC would actually be appealing to me and I might even build one myself.

[Nalien]

I'd like Airships to have some actual content behind them, something akin to a mix of Treasure Maps and Diadem... I'll always find it incredibly lame how, in a game where you can build and own your own Airship, all that is good for is essentially Retainer Ventures 2.0... We don't even get to ride the damn things, it's such a pathetic piece of content that should have amazing potential...

Change it so that Airships come back with a RNG chance for something like the Treasure Map portals, so you can gather up your FC and go to some random floating island to gain some extra rewards... Maybe it's not always visiting an island, works better for actual boats rather than Airships, but you could have a fight on the ship for some interesting variety... Like I said, works better for a boat (something like a reworked Kraken fight), but Final Fantasy has it's fair share of Airship battles as well, something like 10s Evrae fight?

Of course, the elephant in the room is how Airships are in limited supply, given they're tied to Housing, so not every FC would get access to such interesting content so there is no point developing it... That's just an argument from moving the Workshop off Housing though... Put the Workshop as a physical location in the 3 starting cities that FCs can pay to access, then every FC has one and the Housing version can just function as a more convenient way to access it.

[Wanzzo]

SE could create a special series of side quests based entirely on FCs. But not dumb quests with awful rewards.

Weekly optional quests (that changes overtime) for all FCs requiring members inside a FC to work togheter in order to accomplish the weekly goals.

The rewards should be rare buffs (which last 1 week or so) or rare/exclusive itens for crafting. Or even access to more dungeons or places to explore (revamping/including the eureka and similars?)

They could include the hunt system on it also.

Reducing the interaction to "4 of us stays inside the factory for 1 min eventualy" is too bad!

They should consider improving this.

I totally agree with your thread!

[Evogolist]

I think someone pretty much touched on all the things I'd like to see.
1) Newer Ranks/ Tier 3 & 4 FC buffs available
2) Expansion of FC Chest
3) A Board or something that players both old and new can click on to find a FC to their liking. (Gridania has a perfect spot for it at their GC HQ) (Also XI did this like 2-3 years ago, so why is XIV behind?)

*On a sidenote the issue with FC only content is that there'll always be that handful of crybabies that will whine if they can't partake in it because they either a) don't have a FC or b) choose not to socialize within the game.