To all FC Leaders....Can you Help me PLEASE! (^.^)

[Casper]

Another point: I personally built the basement of my FC during my leveling. I never used DF, always shouted for my dungeons, and leveled through dungeons and not fate. During runs i would be social and show that i was competent, knowledgeable and fun at times. When the runs ended, whenever someone was cool and seemed competent, i would /tell them and discuss about the fact that it was nice going with them, and i was building a communauty of like-minded player. I continued to do this during my early stages of HL dungeons (AK runs back in the days more than WP).

It was a lot and lot of work, but it did pay off. A lot of these players at the time left since then, but some are still there, and it especially allowed me to have people move out more slowly and thus start building some momentum. You are basically back to square one here - 3 or 4 people only. Your FC is going to be dead most of the time even during peak hours. You need to start building something again, from the ground up.

[Lyrinn]

From my perspective as a FCless player, you all look the same. Every recruitment message I see tends to be along the lines of something like, "Recruiting casual or hardcore players, focus on leveling, crafting, end-game raiding, have *insert VOIP*, we have # raid groups, very friendly, etc." Sometimes more, sometimes less, but none giving me a reason why I should join a FC or even why the FC wants me aside from being +1 to member count.

As for member retainment, there are a number of reasons that could be an issue. Some players will simply quit; it has nothing to do with you or your FC, they were going to quit anyways. Others may be interested in your FC and then decide it's not for them - in this case, you should try to be honest and ask what they didn't like or would have preferred to see. Forming long lasting bonds is the best way to both gain members and to retain them. That means you should chat and interact with prospective members for days or even weeks in advance instead of run a duty, have a good time, and invite.

[Ryuko]

I can relate to the OP... sort of. After I left my first FC, I joined another one... then that leader quit and broke his FC before he left... so I decided I would just build my own. That was 11/12/13 (cool date not intended, but I wanted to mention it anyway). I brought in a few VERY close friends and remnants from the old FC... but we were still VERY small for a long time. Like you said, a lot of people did not want to join BECAUSE we were so small and simply not established yet. So, I created a linkshell. You can only have one Free Company but you can have EIGHT Linkshells. Any time I would meet someone nice in any sort of PUG situation (hardmodes, extreme modes...), I would offer to toss them an invite.

When it came to Free Company events, I would always give FC members first priority (loyalty > all), but for a long time we did not have enough active FC members to get anything done... so, I would ask the LS if anyone wanted to join. From there, we would get friendly pugs we were used to playing with. Over time, some of these people enjoyed playing with us so much that they chose to leave their old FC and join mine... slowly making it bigger. I'd tell them over and over again how small it is, and warn them that it is different from other Free Companies... but if they insist they are okay with that, I will throw them an invite. Now my FC is still small, but full of active people who are capable of doing any content in the game. We organize fundraising events twice a week to work toward a company house. As we grow larger and more established, people in the linkshell choose to join us. I still invite people to the linkshell, but I don't need to ask my linkshell 'reserve' to join as often. HOWEVER -- if a linkshell person needs help with anything, I still still help out. I don't want to abandon the LS.

My advice to you, OP: don't try to directly recruit. You'll get frustrated. I made a post on my server forums and have only gained one member that way, partially because he saw my thread, bumped into me in PvP, and decided to send me a tell. Instead of directly recruiting or shouting, grow your linkshell, and increase your Free Company's reputation by word of mouth. Create a FC website (there are many free methods to this... I personally use guildwork), and plan events regularly so that your active members WILL stay in the group and have something to look forward to. Set the FC message frequently. Be sure to help out everyone at all levels of play.

[Pachisu89]

A year from now I'm sure it will be full of content and they will have fixed many of it's issues (like multi job dungeon runs) and a non existent player market. But most of all, a world with a reason to explore it, not a town full of duty poppers.

Key word "Year" what alot of the ppl playing this game for get, JUST like in WoW and FFXI it toke 2+years be for the game was GOOD, BOTH WoW and XI started out with 0 to no content for the 1st year. FFXIV ARR is NOT FFXVI 1.0! You cant count the last 2-3years of a game as it 1st year. FFXIV: ARR is a NEW MMO it need time to build.. and don't for get alot of ppl started at lv50 and must of them are the ones QQing over this 0 Content.

I myself have all 50s but 3 Jobs and yes I'm slowy getting burned out too.. But 2.2 is coming and there will be 60-90 more day of content to play agan be for I get burned out again. So what i do it work on my FC and help member gear out are to get rdy for the new content to come. As a Leader it's my job after all to look after my FC.