To FC Leaders.

[818iggy]

Hello fellow Eorzeans,

This question pertains to the leaders or "higher ups" of the countless FC's that exist. I recently became part of a FC which I enjoy and have been given some responsibility, though my contributions and general participation. Although I know it is silly to have the notion that "Oh everybody we recruit will stay with us and the FC will always run 100%" I would very much like any tip/anecdotes on how to help make the FC run as smoothly as possible.

ideas like FC hierarchy structure, contributions, event planning, resolving FC disputes, recruitment or anything else you peeps can think of will be greatly appreciated.

[CodeCass]

I'm interested in this as well as my FC just promoted me to Leader, and I'm feeling a bit lost with it all.

[Lemon8or]

I'm one of the top 3 in my FC so I'll answer what I can and what I do.
Hierarchy: you need top people with top responsibility like rank settings or housing establish, land settings, your FC gil. Then you need several officers that can invite people and activate FC buffs. Then you should have a veteran members rank that has access to all items chests that you trust. Then you have the regular members that have less access to item chest but with short message. Then you have the new recruits with no privilege so they can't sabotage your FC.
Event planning: Make some nights of the week for the specific things like Coil Tuesday, getting people through titan EX Wednesday, etc. Also can make and appoint a person to make a once-a-month FC event.
Recruitment: Look for people with the similar mindset that your FC believe in. If they don't fit and generally cause FC disputes unnecessarily, give them the boot or ask them to leave.
This is coming from a small FC with 20-30 people perspective.

[Airal]

As a leader from a linkshell in XI, I could toss in a couple suggestions that always worked for us when trying to keep morale and participation high with our members.

1. Always keep the group engaged. If you give free time, make sure they know how much time they have before the next event starts. This is particularly important when your FC is big enough for multiple groups. You should reward players that make an effort to show up on time and make sure that tardy ones understand that being late will get you left out.

2. Rate the members' interests. With no 24 man content, you can't get everyone involved at once unless you run separate things. Gauge interest in certain options your FC can handle. For example, figure out who needs to farm older turns of Coil and set aside the time for these people to get together.

[Airal]

3. Be actively involved. If members see you actively trying to make things happen, they'll probably be more willing to do things as a whole. I've noticed people are most likely to get bored when nothing is going on for an extended period of time or if they get left out. If leaders aren't participating, they may think they don't have to either.

As for resolving disputes, it kind of depends. If it's simply bickering between the two sides, you can put an end to it by asking them to move it to a private discussion or pull them aside yourself and attempt to diffuse the situation. Sometimes it's not worth getting involved yourself. If you feel the need to involve yourself, be ready to do whatever you might have to do. If it's a gear related thing, it helps if the leaders are already organized and determining how people should be looting ahead of time. It doesn't help a group's mentality if they see leaders scrambling over drops.

Hope this helps you!

[Darus]

I attained leadership of my FC after we had a great member crash. This happened to a lot of launch FCs after members got bored of FF14. I've learned a bit watching how my FC changed in number and hearing from others.

Hierarchy - Watch out who gets higher ranks. Ranks are NOT needed to make people feel important, so don't think of it too much as a rewarding system. I have seen accidents happen where someone gets a rank for something silly and they do something wrong to the FC. Rank is about responsibility, duty, and capacity to help out in managing the FC.

Contributions - Get your FC to do things in ways that feel like a bake sale. Have a money grinding day, work with economic minded members to get items on the market, and otherwise help out toward that new house or remodeling of the current one.

Events - Events are something many think too much on. Keep it simple - a raid group, or random manderville dance party, or even jumping into a friendly FCs house to have a naked hot tub party. don't have to plan in advance. If you really wanna inspire the group though, start getting someone to record videos of funny times. Members cherish seeing themselves in videos and are more likely to stay then.

Disputes - For the most part, stay out of them. It's mostly going to be interpersonal. If it's aimed at the FC or yourself for whatever reason keep calm and take it one step at a time. If it gets out of hand because the disputer just wants to dispute and troll, kick em - plain and simple.

Recruitment - Several ways, depending on your FC needs. Are you just zerging in members? Then have recruitment shouts in beginner areas all the time by select members. Want just a few newbies to train up? Have a quota set and reach that before suspending the shouts. Want high levels? Have some silver tongued members go through Mor Dhona and get friendly with non FC lvl 50's. There's actually quite a few like that (my FC got 3 in one day trying that).

End Game - Make sure to try to maintain a solid amount of end game members. This gives an FC the ability to participate in the meat of the game. Without enough end gamers, the ones who reach it alone will seek out more hardcore FCs. My FC lost a lot of our best members to this initially. It's one thing to have someone that can run a Brayflox, another to be able to gather some help for Coils.

General Advice - Keep the FC more personal for members. Call em out by name, invite them to raids and stuff, mention how ya don't wanna leave em out of the fun. Try to invent new ways to get together and have a zany fun time. I've had one of our members find out about the FF14 Machinas I put up on youtube and go crazy over it. I'm sure he's morel likely to stick around because of that. If I have people participate in them, they're also more likely to stick around. try not to forget your members and have them be numbers. It's about being a fun family, not who has more members race.

[Maero]

i concur with what everyone has said. Try to include everyone and don't have a "clique".
We always help members out either leveling or end game dungeons, raids, etc.
Also nice to do the special events together like easter, christmas or treasure hunts, etc.
While we do have a hierarchy setup for officers, i like to hear the opinion of all members before we do something, like for instance housing.
Even a simple hello when logging in and goodbye when logging out goes a long way

[Desidious]

There are many different types of companies out there. Since mine is for adult casual without a lot of free time, we don't have days for certain events but when people ask for help or ask questions we have plenty of members there to help.

As for the rankings, everyone here has pretty much nailed it although I take care of the perks myself completely that way there is never a difference of opinions from other members. I rotate them out of course but if even one member has a request I'll do it over the rotation. I have one person that I can trust that if I really screwed up or lost ownership they can right it up.

My members run the FC as much as I do so it's very comradery based. Pick your style and go with it.

[Adrian74]

Make something different and originall, just not copying the other guilds... Maybe it will surprise you soon or late... ^^

(Okay, it's not helpy information, I know, sorry for being noob)

[Vaughn]

I am not a leader of my FC but have been in my FC since 2.0 launch. The one thing that I would like to see change in my FC is that all events are always at the same time. 8:00 pm EST. This is great for the people that are available to play at 8:00 pm every time. I would like to see event times changed up, maybe 8:00 pm one week and 9 or 10 pm the following or something like that. By keeping the same time you are only including the same people every time.