Company System Discussion - What do you want?

[AlexiaKidd]

Moved this post from General Discussion as I had some new ideas and it took the OP over 10k characters, eeeek

Thought it would be good to see what people want and are expecting from the Company system once it comes into play. So what do you all want from this system?

HUGE POST WARNING

I personally think it could have a lot of potential and it would be a shame for SE to waste a great opportunity to involve everyone in something much bigger than what we could achieve alone.

Here are a couple of my idea's of what I would like to see in the Company System:

Grand/Public Companies

I would like the Public Company system to use FFXI's Campaign system as a starting point. With this we choose to pledge our allegiance to a nation and in return we start off at the bottom rank for the Company. We can work our way up the ranks by taking part in missions and campaigns against enemy troops. As we move up the ranks greater rewards are unlocked and more challenging missions become available to us. A new monetary system called Company Credits could be used within the system and as rewards for taking part in Company activities that could be used for buying temporary items, new exclusive gear and weapons and upgrading the Company House.

Now for Content:

Quest Hubs/Camps

First I would like the feeling of a constant war with skirmishes taking place all over the regions. I was thinking the New Quest Hub Camps could serve a purpose here. Each region would house a Beastmen Stronghold and the Quest Hubs would act as the territories we would fight for in between. Lets say there are 5 Quest Hubs per region, these would have to be attacked or defended depending who had control of them. If your nation had control of it then you would need to defend it from Beastmen attacks, if the Beastmen had control then you would have to take the fight to them. Each Quest Hub could offer exclusive quests and missions while under your control. These could be anything from Recon missions locating enemy troops, rescuing kidnapped NPC's that were taken during the last attack, even gathering rare items to help turn the tide of battle.

The Quests Hubs defences would have to be maintained, think of it like a HP bar and when it gets to zero we lose the Camp and the bonuses that come with it. Bonuses while under our control could be anything from cheaper anima costs to teleport to the Camp, cheaper Chocobo rentals, larger variety of temporary items to boost your character during battle, favourable synthesis conditions and so on. The enemy objective is to take the camp and as such they will try and wear down the HP bar of the camp, to stop them we must stop them getting to the camp and actually attacking it. They can even have troops that can run in with bombs that we have to take down fast before they get to their objective. When we are on the attack then we must try and take their camp by wearing down it's HP bar to bring it under our control.

While all Quests Hubs in the region are under our control this would allow us to make an assault on the enemy Stronghold. This would be a very difficult battle and would require a huge group effort from many people, a lot more than 8 put it that way. If we could finally topple the Beastmen NM then even greater rewards and Bonuses would be granted to the whole Company.

Each Quest Hub would have it's own NPC army and leader which would assist in the battles. Their numbers and usefulness would depend on factors outlined below.

DOW/DOM

Their part in this is obvious, attack and defend the camps in large scale skirmishes, these battles would last between 30-60 mins. The leader of the Camp would call out the mission, if the enemy was not on the advance we would take the fight to them at the next Quest Hub under enemy control. If the enemy was on the advance then we would start preparing our defences and get ready to defend the Camp upon the enemies arrival.

The Battles would be like a large scale Behest but not with the silly claim rules and 8 person cap on the amount of players that can take part. As many players that want to take part can, this is a large scale battle. Upon registering for the upcoming battle, you will be able to buy temporary items to be used in the battle to boost your stats, the lower your rank the higher the boost. This will allow lower rank players a chance to assist in the battle by boosting HP/MP and attack stats to that of near a rank 50 but will not gain them all the skills that a R50 would possess but they can still chip away at a mobs HP bar and take some hits without getting 1 shotted in most cases.

Each wave of enemies faced would have a NM leader with them and they would be much tougher than the rest of the troops that come with them. That is not to say the normal enemy troops are a push over, there is a reason this is a large scale battle and the mobs would not drop in seconds, they would have enough HP to keep a full party busy for a few mins each.

Though the benefits of partying up for this are obvious it is not mandatory and solo players can still contribute just as much. The claim rule will be abolished for this content so anyone can fight anything and not have to worry about SP/EXP. SP/EXP will be distributed at the end once the battle is over or if you can not wait until the end talk to the NPC to jump out and it will be awarded then. Your SP/EXP total will be worked out on many factors of how much you contributed to the battle as a whole. So how much damage you did if you are a DD, how much damage taken if you are a tank, how much you nuked/cured and buffed/debuffed if a mage and so on, these will be balanced based on your class to keep things fair. So if you did very little during the fight you will receive less than someone who went all out and did a lot to help fend off the enemy.


DoH/DoL

Lets not forget Crafting and Gathering Classes in all of this. Crafters could be used to make supplies of new weapons and gear for the NPC armies. Blacksmiths forging Blades, Culinarian's cooking up treats to boost morale, Alchemists brewing potions and so on. Crafters could even repair/build defences while the Battle Classes defended them.

Temporary items that the DoW/DoM use could be crafted by the crafting classes and the amount available to them would depend on the supply that the crafters had produced.

Gatherer's would gather supplies to keep our stock levels high so Crafters would have what they need to produce what that have to. Gatherers could also have missions to retrieve rare items that could help turn the tide of battle.

While on attack missions crafters could work on destroying the enemy camps defences to bring it under our control while DoW/DoM fended of the enemy troops trying to attack them.

Then there could be group crafting and gathering activities in the regions capital like building ships for Limsa's fleet and cannons for defences. Maybe even a group effort to provide our leaders with the best and highest quality Armour possible. Miners could have excavation sites where they could dig up special materials used by Companies to power their big weapons.

There are lots of possibilities for the Public Company system and I am sure some of you have even better idea's that SE could use.

[AlexiaKidd]

Private/Player Companies

Within the Public Company system sits the Private Company system. This would function like a Linkshell with objectives really. Private Companies again could grow in rank and stature by the missions and quests they undertake. Private Companies could deal with more local issues to start off with. So for example for Limsa they could deal with the Sahagin and Seal Rock and have story lines that go along with it. The essence of Private Companies is teamwork with team based objectives.

Limsa is in a fortunate position as it has islands around it that they could used for instanced battlefields for Private Companies. We could have our own boats that we could kit out and upgrade and use them as mobile command centres when docked on an island. They could have Chocobo stables in them to store our trusty mounts ready for deployment when on a mission. DoW/DoM could head out into the island to neutralise the threat and recover the object. DoH could keep the ships defences going by repairing the boat and maintaining the ships defences to repel any attacking forces and DoH could head out and gather supplies to keep us going and make sure the DoH have what they need to keep the boat operational.

As our Company grows we could eventually gain Airships to use that could take us to even further and more remote battlefields.

Company Housing

For Private Companies I would also like Company Housing. This would be our HQ I guess, a communal house where we would have access to various features. As our Company credits grow in our Private Company account we could use the funds to buy upgrades to our housing. So maybe we start off in a run down building and as we grow we can buy either upgrades to the existing building or a whole new bigger and better building. Then we could add extensions to it like the Chocobo Stable's, Airship landing pad and so on. A few things I would like in this house would be the following:

• A main communal room which we can decorate and also mount trophies from our NM's kills and completed missions/accomplishments.
  
• A Communal Storage area where I can drop off mats and items which I may not find useful but a crafter in our Company might.
  
• A Chocobo stables for raising our Chocobo's and looking after them.
  
• An Airship landing pad for our Airship. Our Airship would be fully upgradable so we can kit it out with new features and perks as we grow as a Company.
  
• A dock for our boat. Same as the Airship we can fully upgrade it.
  
• Private quarters that we can decorate and also storage for our gear that we wouldn't put in the communal storage.
  
• A crafter area that you could kit out with support benches.
  
• A garden would also be nice too that we could grow things in. It would be great if you could grow things for Botanists to harvest, and maybe even some types of rock plants for Miners to harvest too. Also a pond for the Fishermen/women within the Company.

Again with Private Companies there are a lot of possibilities, as your Company and reputation grow you could find yourselves hired by other Companies or leaders like Coerthas to take part in even bigger operations to help save Eorzea.

If SE could pull all of this off I would be very happy and kept very busy for a long time, but I want to hear other peoples idea's as to what they think the Company system should include, so come on lets get some idea's going.

[Cendres]

I've translated a post from the french forums here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post211863

Hopefully this helps a bit.

[Irana]

Im all up for private housing to be honest. I would like to feel that I have a place to take a rest in and not feel like a Vagrant.