State of the Game: Free and Grand Companies + Campaign and Conquest System

[Delmontyb]

There is a lot to love about Final Fantasy XIV, and having given the latest expansion some thought, I figured I'd like to share some ideas that would add to the overall replay ability of the game as a whole.

While I have a lot of ideas that I want to share, this post is focused on the idea of Free and Grand Companies and the lack of updates to these two systems, along with the refreshing content around the Campaign and Conquest Systems (currently not in the game)

YouTube video if TLDR

1. Free Company Levels
Free companies currently have ranks, and they are capped at level 8, and have been capped at this level for quite some time. I would love to see a free company level setup and allow your free company to keep leveling up, and which each level, get some fun type of rewards (like housing cosmetics) or something fun like that. You're free company level.
Members earn experience by participating in content, as well as campaigns, and conquests. You could even allow for free companies to tie into the Seasons system, allowing you to see how many levels you can gain as a group in a given season. We already have buffs tied into the free company which is awesome, but this would act as a nice little name tag or title to share as a whole company.

2. Conquest
Conquest is the idea of controlling a zone by doing content within that zone. This works by going off a weekly reset cycle, where your free company (or even grand company) earns points for doing content in any zone. Dungeons, Trials, Fates, Leves, and more all contribute to your Free or Grand Company value. If you “win” the zone, your free company banner would then be displayed, and perhaps you’d get some type of cosmetic reward, etc. The more times you can control a zone, the more your banner would rank up, and display. This would serve as a way to advertise your free company to players on your server, as players could “apply” via these banners.
How this could work in the lore: Since Grand Companies aren’t at war, the story could be that they are awarded honor for keeping the realm safe.
How to balance against “one free company always winning”: the holder of the zone earns less points in zones they control, and perhaps you can even have free company buffs that multiple your points for content to help you get advantage, and those buffs don’t work in zones you already control. This would have a diminishing return; thus, it would tie into ranks going up to a gold rank for controlling the zone three weeks in a row.
Bonus rewards: Reduced teleport costs to zones your free company/grand company control.

3. Campaigns
Along with Conquest, a campaign would be a week long event in a zone where fates, world bosses, and more spawn, and the grand companies issue a call to the zone to help push back the “forces” that oppose the grand companies. Players would be rewarded for taking part in the campaign and crafting, gathering would also be apart of this. Think of this as a week long Hamlet Defense system, on a zone wide scale. This would take place in one selected and different zone each week, adding in new value, along with having a large population of the server working together.
At the end of the week, one grand company is declared “the winner” and various rewards, bonuses are handed out to those in the free company, and each one is ranked.
To prevent there always being only one winner, the system would offer diminishing returns or buffs to the other Grand Companies to help make sure there is a fair balance, so everyone doesn’t find it necessary to pledge to the winning Company.
Those are just my ideas, I’d love to hear your feedback, and hopefully get the attention of the development team with this feedback.
Thanks for your time and attention.

[Xenedra]

In into the idea of conquest for XIV. It was pretty neat to see the maps change back in XI and get those little extra bonuses.

[Delmontyb]

In into the idea of conquest for XIV. It was pretty neat to see the maps change back in XI and get those little extra bonuses.

I'm very interested in seeing where 4.4 goes, as I thought 4.X would have made the perfect time for this content... I'd love to see the grand companies used more, and same goes for the free companies.

[Tracewood]

XI had those cool instances where players had to defend an area and if you fail, it'd fall to the beastmen and you'd have to stage a party to recover the NPCs... it made it really interesting since those strongholds were filled with enemies that could wipe an illprepared party.

Wings of the Goddess had a cool idea with beastmen attacking areas at random, including the starter cities. I'd like to have that in the next expansion where the Garleans were secretly preparing for a full scale war in Eorzea while we were too busy liberating Ishgard, Doma, and Ala Mhigo. Let's say, your "victory" was meant to be short term, they handed you Belsar's Wall, Ala Mhigo, and Doma. The primal threats and other oddities like Eureka, Omega, and the Warring Triad were a ploy to spread the scions to the corners of the world. With Alphinaud solely going into enemy territory, that gave them the perfect opportunity to "strike back" if you will. High level garlean soldiers in specific areas will start to trickle in and if not pushed back areas become taken over. Aetherytes would not work (Aether disruptors) until you beat the "boss", destroy the disruptor and chase them away.

Now of course you'll get certain players that hate the idea because not being able to fast travel to a certain area would be an "inconvenience" but with all the unique ways of travel it's not so bad... plus it makes the overworld far more active.

[Crystal_Raven]

I disagree with the whole conquest aspect. I used to play a game where the map was open to fight over by the guilds. 2-3 guilds(FC's) ruled everything and everyone knew them while the rest fell into obscurity. Everyone wanted to join those guilds and the ones allied with them. No one else. This eventually drove the entire community to being either a part of or allied with those few that ran everything and fought the others trying to get more.

I'd rather not see that here. The amount of toxicity that gave the game is immense.

[Enkidoh]

Right, also, the storyline of FFXIV simply does not support such a system. FFXI's setting did because the beastmen in FFXI were far stronger and better organized militarily than the beast tribes are here (Conquest was little more than a system to control crystal drops and decide whether you could teleport to or from an outpost in a certain zone or not though and otherwise had no real tangible benefit overall).

Having said that, back in the Beta test when FATEs were first tested I actually suggested on the Beta forum about possibly tweaking FATEs to be more like Campaign in FFXI (in that participation is not automatic but requires the player to 'opt in' by speaking to a specific npc and getting a special status that flags them as a participant, and participation having some kind of accumulated effect in that zone, such as granting prestige to your nation for that area or something), but there was no response about it sadly. So I am liable to take from that SE is simply not interested in utilizing FFXI ideas in FFXIV I'm afraid.

[Delmontyb]

Right, also, the storyline of FFXIV simply does not support such a system. FFXI's setting did because the beastmen in FFXI were far stronger and better organized militarily than the beast tribes are here (Conquest was little more than a system to control crystal drops and decide whether you could teleport to or from an outpost in a certain zone or not though and otherwise had no real tangible benefit overall).

I believe this could be addressed by just having it as a "who kept this zone the safest" concept, rather than who's trying to own the land etc. I use the term conquest because it resonates with me as an old FFXI player. But the strengths of the system and as passive content would be interesting, fun, IMO