I see where you are going with this and I agree to an extent. We had/have a few career crafters on the server who really only put there time into crafting and if that is what makes them happy in the game that is what they need to do. That being said a lot of our server crafts casually, I do and several other people I know do. I personally love to craft my Leatherworker and my Alchemist are my two loves. Here recently I am assuming because of the pre-expansion lule a lot of people have turned to crafting to fill the downtime. That is why I placed it in the "Casual" group.
I completely agree with this hands down. Our server has so many FCs that are "just friends" FCs and though I see why they do it I see why it hurts them. I am 2nd in command of Abel's Vengeance and I have noticed that a lot the "just friend" Free Companies vanish in 1-6 months. The largest issue I see from small FCs is the fact that they play with only there friends and don't meet new people and then when they want to get content done and they cant the either leave the server or they just stop playing the game. My personal number one thing when playing any MMO is if you aren't having fun figure out a way to have fun. What I see benefiting the entire server as a whole if the smaller FCs talking about merging with a larger one and creating a LS for their friends. It can server the same purpose the current FC is doing and it will allow them to meet new people and venture further into the game then they thought.
Alright now I have a question for you, Have you tried to raid if so how successful have you been?
Another question I have, Have you had any questions about your class and not be able to figure it out do to not being able to talk to someone and actually fine tune your rotation?
These are little things that i want to do to help our players on the server. Back when A Realm Reborn (2.0) had come out. I experienced one of the most friendly and helpful communities than in ANY OTHER MMO I have ever played. When I hit 50 on my White Mage there were people wanting to help others with CM and Praetorium there were people who had Cleared Ifrit HM and Garuda HM coming back and helping people just to help them. There were people helping others with class rotation stuff and willing to give up their own free time just to benefit the community and now we have people trying to sell other people the "Tips and Tricks" they learned from raiding, and selling clear carries just to make money.
Our server you can argue is Mid-Pop I wont deny that especially with the influx of new players we are getting on our server, but roughly the amount of people that come on can't outweigh the amount of people who are transferring off due to the fact they can't get content done on our server. Also I have been approached by people from Large FCs and Small FCs to help them get through content, since I created my Community Help LS.
Right now the issue on our server is that people aren't willing to help others with things that they need. Now I'm not talking about helping someone atma farm or dungeon atma farm, because anyone who as done that will agree with me.. IT SUCKS, but through Extreme Mode primals, Coil or even other trials.
The community is what needs to be kickstarted and fix the ideals of player that have the mentality of "Why should I help them, They are apart of my FC" is terrible. We have a large number of people on our server who want to get through content such as T9 and on and there are only a handful of people willing to put the effort forth and helping them.
Royal I want to help as much as I can with whatever you need. Ill get a LS Created and we can figure something using both of our Free Companies Resources. ^.^ Any other FC that is willing is most definitely able to join!
I wont deny that crafters have their own version of "Endgame" but like I stated there are a larger number of Casual Crafters than Career Crafter.
Moving on to what Pact tried to do; they were trying to do the same thing in principle but going about it a different way. They wanted to spur community activity by giving incentives such as raffles, and other events like that. I am wanting the Free Companies to work as one to help the community by helping those who want to learn to better themselves in ALL ASPECTS. If eventually as a community we want to start up a raffle or scavenger hunt or something along those lines cool but to start with that is not how I want to spur the community to work as one. As well I see why PACT ended up leaving, they tried to get people to do things and people kept turning their shoulders the other way and avoiding it. If I had more time to give at that point I would have definitely thrown my hat into the ring to help what PACT tried to do and I would have done everything in my power to steer it the way that I am trying to do now.
Lastly I don't want any credit thrown my way or towards my FC I want to spur community growth and activity. I want players to start working towards helping one another instead of shitting on each other. I want Free Companies to take it upon themselves to help everyone not just there Free Company. It would be cool if crafters helped one another with learning rotations and work together on the economy since they are the frontlines in it, some could argue more than other players.
In all honesty though I do need to say something with this comment. In almost every forum post I go to that you have commented on instead of giving changes that could be done to help whatever cause it is you attack people or are really negative.
I have been and can be really negative too but it seems like a consistant thing when it comes to your posts. Maybe you don't mean it to sound that way but it comes across.