Option to Join multiple FCs

[Lihtleita]

We already have that. Linkshells.

we also have fellowships. even if they arent used.

[GeminiReed]

ESO has this. Think Guild Wars 2 does too. Works for allowing players to be in different FCs at the same time that often doing different things.

So you can join 1 FC for raiding. 1 for socializing. 1 for crafting. And 1 shell FC so you can have a house.

I like the idea in general but the housing crisis is a solid reason why it should not happen until Square fixes housing or FC's become decoupled from housing. Statics are better for raiding and aren't constrained to everybody having to be on the same world.

But on another note, isn't this what linkshells are for(along with other discord servers)?

Linkshells are diet FC's. They sorta kinda fill a similar niche but fail in some important aspects. FC's can have 512 members, the chat works cross world, and it's easy enough to get shared storage. Normal linkshells can only have a paltry 128 members with no storage and chat is limited to the world they were created on. Cross-world linkshells have even more restrictive membership at 64, no storage, but can communicate across worlds.

If I had design control, the budget, and resources I'd rip out the existing chat, linkshell, and cwls systems and replace it with a global chat cross-world server with custom channel support, proper administrative ranks, and access controls that can accommodate a reasonable population (65k?). Custom channels can be public/auto-join, join by application, or invite only and would have a proper blacklist that works by character or account.

we also have fellowships. even if they arent used.

And they've been rejected for good reason. The only (very faint) notification you get is on login and you're not told why. You have to actively refresh each fellowship you're part of to see if anybody's left a message. Better off using Discord.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I like the idea in general but the housing crisis is a solid reason why it should not happen until Square fixes housing or FC's become decoupled from housing. Statics are better for raiding and aren't constrained to everybody having to be on the same world.


Linkshells are diet FC's. They sorta kinda fill a similar niche but fail in some important aspects. FC's can have 512 members, the chat works cross world, and it's easy enough to get shared storage. Normal linkshells can only have a paltry 128 members with no storage and chat is limited to the world they were created on. Cross-world linkshells have even more restrictive membership at 64, no storage, but can communicate across worlds.

If I had design control, the budget, and resources I'd rip out the existing chat, linkshell, and cwls systems and replace it with a global chat cross-world server with custom channel support, proper administrative ranks, and access controls that can accommodate a reasonable population (65k?). Custom channels can be public/auto-join, join by application, or invite only and would have a proper blacklist that works by character or account.


And they've been rejected for good reason. The only (very faint) notification you get is on login and you're not told why. You have to actively refresh each fellowship you're part of to see if anybody's left a message. Better off using Discord.

65k people in 1 channel would be impossible to read. That just sounds terrible. As does global chat.

[GeminiReed]

65k people in 1 channel would be impossible to read. That just sounds terrible. As does global chat.

I was getting wordy so I left some reasoning out. I also forgot to include no hard cap on the number of channels any character can belong to. One of my friends recently left the only LS we had in common because they're capped.

I never meant 65k simultaneous participants. That would be hell to follow and I suspect any chat with more than 1000 or even 100 active participants would be untenable. I'm in a couple of large Discord servers with about 1000 actives but only 10-20 are actively chatting at any one time. Chances are the people would self-organize into more manageable channels.

That figure is an intentional overestimate to ensure that it can accommodate large communities of characters without having to play musical chairs. NA has a very diverse timezone spread and not everybody plays during their geography's prime-time. In other words, not all members will be connected at the same time. Trying to guess a good upper bound is hard. The decision to limit CWLS to 64 characters is as much a howler as "Nobody needs more than 640k".

It would be a godsend for those of us that play alts, want to keep tabs on hunts, follow organized RP events, etc. Anything that could benefit from real-time notifications. With proper access controls those sorts of channels administrators can limit who can post.

If it sounds like Discord, you're not wrong. The problem with Discord is that it's incredibly hard to get people to actually use it. I've seen much better adoption of in-game custom channels in other games than I have Discord probably because 2nd screens aren't all that common.

Among the group I came here with there's an opinion that XIV is extremely insular. IMO some of that is because the Chat UI sucks but also because how restrictive the social constructs (FC, LS, CWLS) are.