Free Company Alliances

[Alex_LoneWolf]

This would be a really cool feature, but would members of such an allegiance be able to share housing functions (gardening, ships, ect) as well? I wouldn't mind that at all.

That was in the original design that was announced, if I remember correctly, but even if we just ended up with another chat mode for Free Companies that wanted to work together, that'd be a big step forward.

[LalaRu]

... we have no tools to effectively communicate with each other. We’ve tried many things, including linkshells and using Discord, but no solution has been a perfect fit ...

What did you expect from the "alliance" feature? I don't see so much more than a common chat, why linkshells didn't worked out?

[Kosmos992k]

FC Alliances would be a help to small and medium sized Free companies who want to ally with each other an work together on content - without losing their own identity by merging.

I can see the reasons for larger FCs wanting something like this, but I suspect that for them, an increase in the membership size would be more practical.

The whole FC Alliance thing has been talked of again and again an has come to nothing. Other FC based content that would have (and still would be) helpful is some degree of player created content where FCs can set up specific treasure hunts, monster hunts, or other forms of challenge within the framework of the FC.

However just being able to ally two or more small/mid sized FCs together would create opportunities to run content which other wise might require pick up groups. I know of many instances where players have left one FC or another to form one of their own. Many times those FCs remain relatively tiny. It would be great if those FCs could ally themselves with their parent FCs, so that they can all work together without sacrificing the very thing they originally sought - some level of individual identity.

This would be a really cool feature, but would members of such an allegiance be able to share housing functions (gardening, ships, ect) as well? I wouldn't mind that at all.

If I remember correctly, that was part of the functionality that was discussed, allowing FC members within the alliance to use the FC house(s) of the FCs within the alliance.

so, lets say there are about 10k active players per server. That means a fc which can hold 5% of a whole servers population isnt enough?

I dont think that such alliances are necessary

Think smaller. Large FCs have less need of this feature than small/medium sized FCs do.

If there were several smaller FCs who share a similar approach and view of the game to a larger FC that has a house, forming an alliance would potentially allow those smaller FCs to gain the benefits of the FC house (which many small FCs don't have), without having to be merged into a larger FC.

[LalaRu]

It would be great if those FCs could ally themselves with their parent FCs, so that they can all work together without sacrificing the very thing they originally sought - some level of individual identity.

Will agree on this, my proposal:
Being able to join a linkshell as a FC: all FC members are automatically part of it, and joins/removals follows the FC joins/removals. If two different FCs join same linkshell, here is the alliance How we can call it, fcshell?

Edit: I don't like the sharing of housing, it can be easily exploited by splitting a FC in order to buy more plots, a thing that is already a problem today and can just aggravate.

[Alex_LoneWolf]

What did you expect from the "alliance" feature? I don't see so much more than a common chat, why linkshells didn't worked out?

Currently we have 3 or 4 linkshells for our members just for some of our members to communicate in. We don't have enough room to fit everyone from our free company and the other free companies we had to create into the linkshells. An alliance chat would make it so that we could efficiently communicate with everyone without having to choose who can get access to our linkshells for communicating.

[Alex_LoneWolf]

Will agree on this, my proposal:
Being able to join a linkshell as a FC: all FC members are automatically part of it, and joins/removals follows the FC joins/removals. If two different FCs join same linkshell, here is the alliance How we can call it, fcshell?

Edit: I don't like the sharing of housing, it can be easily exploited by splitting a FC in order to buy more plots, a thing that is already a problem today and can just aggravate.

This is an interesting idea on paper, but I'm really not sure if the devs could actually make that work.

Sharing of housing could also be used to help Free Companies that can't afford housing or cannot get housing due to lack of space. Here on Leviathan, there's definetly not enough housing plots to go around.

[Alex_LoneWolf]

Post

I really appreciate that you gave a rundown of some of the things that FC Alliances could do to help out small and medium sized FCs. +1 Awesomeness for you!

[Xander_Valefor]

Think smaller. Large FCs have less need of this feature than small/medium sized FCs do.

^^^ Yes a thousand times yes. There are multiple reasons why an FC allaince would benefit us and this is probably the most obvious.

[Alex_LoneWolf]

Folks, please, spread the word around. There are many ways that this could help people in small, medium, and large Free Companies!
For some people, this could be really beneficial!

[Nicobo]

That was in the original design that was announced, if I remember correctly, but even if we just ended up with another chat mode for Free Companies that wanted to work together, that'd be a big step forward.

Yes you remember correctly.
But I am sorry to tell that eventually all we got was the "Alliances" featue, an more flexible that the 24men even no need to be in a FC! ^^;
That's what the ancient mentioned "Free Company Alliances", sorry to tell that but it was the result.


FYI - below post on 10-22-2013 03:33 AM

Hello,

We realize there are a lot of concerns about not being able to join the Binding Coil of Bahamut without the use of the Duty Finder as well as free companies that have different purposes.

During Letter from the Producer Live IX the other day, Yoshi-P discussed some upcoming features that will help alleviate these concerns. The biggest of which is the implementation of a party member recruitment feature where you can search something like a bulletin board to find and recruit party members with similar goals. This is scheduled to be implemented in patch 2.1 and we will be announcing more details on this feature in the future.

Also, as we've mentioned in the past we will be indicating what item level equipment is required for content in order to participate, so members who wish to participate with you will all be on the same page gear wise.

Finally, in patch 2.2, as we mentioned in a separate post last week, we are planning to implement a free company alliance system, which will let you join your free companies together to see both member lists, share a chat channel, and have other useful features.

We'll be implementing a variety of features moving forward step by step to ensure that everyone can play comfortably and easily in the content that they wish to participate in.