[FC] Syncademy

[Hotelfox]

Syncademy - A synchronized (min. ilvl) content community

Syncademy is a Discord community based on the Light DC. We are dedicated to providing a relaxed place to learn synced raiding in FFXIV and a chance to get into raid leading for sprouts and veterans alike. Syncademy organizes raids up to 5 days per week during EU prime time and employs a calendar signup system which allows us to raid and progress on a community level with non-static groups since our foundation at the end of November 2019!

Community Free Companies
Currently we're able to offer FCs on three worlds (Twintania, Lich, Odin, Raiden and Alpha) as a place to hang around with some of our community members. All of them have more or less decorated FC houses, offer full chocobo training & coloring support, and FC buffs for raiding, teleportation, leveling and MGP!
As Twintania's FC also offers Fashion Report items each week, there are plans to extend this business even to the other FCs.

Community Hard Facts

• 1900+ Discord members and around 700 of them joined our raids at least once
• Over 500 raid courses organized over the last 2.5 years
• 110+ active players on a monthly basis with about 120 individual signups per week
• 3-4 raid groups per raid evening and sometimes even up to 6 simultaneous groups
• 12 active Study Groups (in-house static groups)

Community Benefits
We encourage participation by using a community level and achievement system. You will earn experience as well as custom badges and roles in our Discord as you keep participating in the raids.

Regular participation also grants you access to our Linkshell Network consisting of a local LS for each world and a CWLS where we relink between worlds. Within the LS Network you can receive notifications for official or non-official ongoing raids, relax and socialise in-game, while also being able to look for players if you need a last minute backup or a quick group for any other activity.

Community Activities
Outside of raids we have community members organizing all kinds of activities on their own. Anything from Sastasha, roulettes or even Ultimate trials to non-raid activities like treasure maps or Blue Mage Football can be found here. Some of those are even Regular Activities such as Scavenger Hunts or Unreal Clears for Faux Hollows and much more!

For those who want a more consistent experience we also offer our crown jewel: Study Groups! Those groups are our in-house static groups, and that allows you to easily advertise, find and create your own group to raid any and all content.
Study Groups have their own personal chat channel on the server and we also grant them badges with the limitation for one expansion's content per group because we try to keep them temporary and not being a closed group within the community.

Community Achievements
We have completed all Savage Raids up to E11S so far. On our way up to that point we have expanded our raids into two Raid Series: One for Coils and Alexander and the other for Omega and Eden. The first series is already on its way to complete all of the fights twice!

Additionally we're in the 6th season of re-clearing all Extreme Trials (including the newest additions from Endwalker) and Alliance Raids on MIL (min. item level) and some even undergeared or without jobstones! (Cape Westwind, you'll be missed!)

Our Sprout Mondays offer both newcomers and veteran players an ideal environment to learn the basics of raiding, to try out a new role or job or even to have a shot at leading a raid under guidance of one of our raid leaders. So far it has enjoyed great popularity since its inception!

During all that raiding 17 Study Groups also reached their goals. Those included all Savage Raids and Extreme Trials from ARR up to SB, one Ultimate and even more unique goals like both Deep Dungeons and current content mount farming in ShB.

And, whenever possible, we try to help our students with their MSQ by creating an immersive experience out of completing the final dungeons and Trials on MIL.

Reaching us
You will find a detailed calendar of our weekly raids on our Discord server. If you would like to join Syncademy's ranks or are curious about more details, simply search for the Fellowship with the same name, send a Free Company application or contact us directly ingame or via Discord:

• Turael Dreamwalker (Hotelfox#8756)

[Hotelfox]

The chapters are some kind of short stories about the current events of the Syncademy.

Chapter One: Foundation of the Academy
Several years ago came the idea, while still playing WoW, for creating an environment for players to learn, practice and do every kind of content or giving back your own experiences by teaching and guiding others, but only with FFXIV there were the possibilities to even realize this, together with the synchronization and minimum item level systems and so the Syncademy was founded.

The foundation process from ground up will be a rough job, but with Twintania, as a new server full of new, veteran and most importantly active players, this seems to be the right spot to start a Free Company and recruit like-minded learning enthusiasts.

But the idea of the Syncademy is to even go a step further. Noone needs to leave their friends companies or server, if they want to join that community and therefore several other channels will be etablished in form of a Fellowship for votes and announcements and a Crossworld Linkshell for direct communication between the members.

There is much to do, so let's get started to build up the Syncademy!

[BloodRubyXII]

:concernfroge:

[Hotelfox]

Chapter Two: Matriculation
The recruitment for a Free Company is not an easy job. At least it was expected not to be so and hope wont die that easily. Especially not after such an outstanding resonance from the outer circles. The Syncademy may have not found many members for the Free Company itself, but instead many like-minded people from other FCs or servers, who've joined the Fellowship and Discord.

During the last month many things have happend, even though the pace was kept low, because the holiday season was around the corner. Several unregular courses have been held and three min. ilvl encounters (Ultima's Bane, Garuda Ex and Titan Ex) have been cleared and collaborations has been made with synced content groups for extending the reach.

The Fellowship also evolved to an useful tool for the Syncademy to make announcements and start polls about encounter priorization or course dates. These dates will be used for regular courses on different types of content to expand the portfolio which can be offered.
Beside those regular courses, there will still be unregular courses, which will mostly be used for doing encounters again and helping others to get their clears.

The first chapters has reached its end with a personally more successful outcome, then it has been expected. The chapter of the Matriculation for the newly found regular courses shall give more people a chance to participate by enlisting to the courses on the Discord #calendar.

Let's continue to build upon the foundation of the Syncademy!

[Hotelfox]

Chapter Three: Heavensward
With regularity comes consistency, but with consistency can also come stagnation, if not countered appropriately. To take care of that two active and helpful students, who have shown enthusiasm and helpfulness, gained access to the ranks of the faculty members to further help the Syncademy growth. In addition to that, a survey has been made, which got valuable feedback for further expanding the Syncademies varity.

After the meeting of the faculty members, a decision for the approach of Heavensward content has been made. Another regular course date will be added on Saturdays in addition to slight adjustments to the times at which the courses will be held. There will also be a course destination rotation based on community feedback for offering a broader spectrum of content.

As time flew by, the Syncademy journeyed deep into the Coils of Bahamut and currently faces the source of its inhabitants, while also took up the battle to additional Primal threats as the Moogle King, Odin, Leviathan and Ramuh. Especially the last two of them were a harder nut to crack on minimum item level, but with the help of Hydaelyn Ramuh could be laid to rest and with further studies the Thunder God will not be a match for the Syncademy anymore.

The ranks of students have filled up nicely as many players have matriculated to the Syncademy, that even two groups were able to take the fight into the Coils at the same time or at least began to venture into the depths of MIL dungeons. These recent events will bring the chapter of Matriculation to its conclusion and an even brighter future awaits.

Let's continue to venture heavensward with the Syncademy!

[Hotelfox]

Chapter Four: Study Groups
Review, reflect and refine! Three crucial steps, which are needed to improve with each chapter. With those chapters the way how the Syncademy evolves, shall be maintained. Growth, promotions, activity and knowledge are some of the things, which are heavily connected to the chapters. These shall help to keep track of the Syncademy's evolution.

Review! The Syncademy has grown by large amounts over the last chapter and even tripled the member size.
During that period also two more most reliable members have been added to the ranks of the faculty members to help cover that growth rate, which were especially needed to hold up to three course groups at the raid evenings.

With the conclusion of the ARR progression and a perfect example of sharing the knowledge by getting 13 firstkills at T13 with rotating group members over three attempts, the Syncademy celebrated the victory by organizing a Community Choice Week and made its way to Heavensward. All Extreme Trials of HW already got laid down low at least on synced, while progress has been made into Alexander and Eden Savage on MIL+Echo. In addition to that the first round of the MIL Crystal Tower Alliance Raid series got completed.
⁣ 
Reflect! To maintain the (re-)progress and sharing the knowledge over the fights, the rotation got invented for the Friday and Saturday courses. By using a difficulty ramp up approach for having reasonable encounter difficulties to learn on and limiting the rotation weekslot extensions, we managed to not get stuck in encounters anymore. The overall strength of the members also has been increased over the last chapter, which further supported quicker firstkills and sharing the knowledge about those fights.

With the constant growth of the Syncademy and a solid foundation of its regular courses an environment got created for the first smaller study groups, which have been formed to cover more ground and deepen the knowledge in different synced aspects of the game.

Refine! To support the further evolution of the Syncademy new channels and roles have been introduced.
First of all a new #study-groups channel got added for an easy and faster way of creating or finding parties within the ranks of the Syncademy on a more spontaneous basis next to the regular courses in our #calendar.

Next to that volunteer mentors got added, who'll maintain the #job-overview channel and try to answer questions in the #job-training channel. This shall further support existing and new members of the Syncademy to get into different roles and jobs.

The future of the Syncademy looks bright and the goal has been set to progress further into Heavensward while also giving previous achieved fights their space as part of our rotations for further continuing to share the knowledge.

Let's continue the studies in groups!

[Hotelfox]

Chapter Five: Stormblood
Four months have passed and again so much has happend in that time. Let's take a look back!

The concept of Study Groups created the possibility to organize unofficial events with like-minded people for single runs of fights. The concept was simple, a Party Finder inside the Discord server, so people can set up raids quick and easy. Soon after the introduction longer-term raid projects came up and to support the coordination of such groups, private channels were added on the Discord for each group.

Throughout the progression in Alexander Syncademy got shaped further. Especially the harder encounters such as A6S and A8S made clear that additional improvements were needed. The introduction of guides to specify strategies began to create a library of information to quickly lookup an unfamiliar encounter. The reduced mixing of group members over several days of progression and the combined usage of both progression days (Wednesday & Sunday) should improve the progression speed for the future.

The second survey confirmed the decisions made on the improvements to Syncademy and even gathered additional feedback on smaller details. As a result of that some adjustments on the Discord server structure will be made and the rotation days (Friday & Saturday) will get some additional variety with more community choice.

With the constant growth of Syncademy's community the workload also increased. A restructuring of the Faculty was needed and by adding Assistant and Volunteer roles certain responsibilities shall be divided upon more members in the future. Now the foundations have been laid for improving the organizational side of Syncademy.

The first year of Syncademy is about to reach its end and preparations for the first anniversary are currently underway. What a strange and wonderful journey this has been.

Let's celebrate this together by conquering Stormblood!

[Hotelfox]

Chapter Six: Shadowbringers
Not unlike a Flood of Light, the workings of Syncademy were nearly overrun by another surge of new people, both active and silent.

The combined usage of both progression days (Wednesday & Sunday) clearly improved and sped up the progression through the Savage Raids. With over three months being in Omega the conclusion of the Alphascape on boths days is already getting closer compared to the six months in Alexander.

Stormblood in general caused an increase in participations and 3-4 groups regularly went into Extremes and Savages with an all time high of 5 groups for Tsukuyomi and a 48-man Rabanastre MIL evening. This increase also caused the CWLS overflow and it was turned into a Linkshell Network with an LS on each world. These linkshells will grow to enhance the experience for our players on each world, if all goes to plan.

On November 27th and over the whole weekend Syncademy celebrated its first anniversary with several fun events organized by students and staff alike. After a year of 192 raid evenings everyone earned a good rest during the holiday season. After a two-week hiatus, everyone had their batteries charged and were ready to raid again.

Full with energy came Syncademy back into the world of raiding, and now aims to complete all of Shadowbringers before the release of Endwalker. Many things are planned. Raid Progression Seasons for constantly redoing old content, expanding the raid leader positions in preparation for another surge in players and raiding concepts for Current Content are being drafted and prepared.

Second year of Syncademy will surely be full surprises - some of them bring shadow, some will bring light. Let's face them together!

[Hotelfox]

Chapter Seven: Progression Seasons
The blast left behind a crack in the ground when Syncademy reached Stormblood in October. First barely noticed, it soon begun to create a rift in Syncademy's playerbase. A rift between new players still in ARR/HW and the raiders in Omega, who further grew the gap with each successful blind progression on a newly faced boss on their journey to Shadowbringers.

Something needed to change before the pack of raiders would move on to Eden after Omega and all ShB Ex Trials. Otherwise a lot of players who joined, and continue to join, will face a huge rift in front of them, a struggle just to catch up. That's why the decision was made to turn back time and raid Alexander on a different timeline next to Eden on the Progression Raid days. Both timelines are currently only tests of the concept and will be expanded to their full potential if they are successful, with ARR/HW on the first and SB/ShB on the second to introduce the full progression circle.

With over 138 unique players participating over the last three months and over 700 members on the Discord server, Syncademy has continued to grow quite a lot. Study Groups, our semi-static way of raiding, are becoming more popular, new Students's Associations bring the community to whole new game worlds or to the frontlines of Bozja and the newest student rank additions fill another gap to grant a better progression through Syncademy.

To keep up with the growth of the community and to support new players, Syncademy's staff is constantly on the lookout to find additional raid leaders. Furthermore, the Mentor program will be improved to offer help and a sprout-friendly "Synced first!" raid day planned on Mondays in the near future.

With the understanding of time salvaged from Alexander's heart and the newly debugged processing power of Omega, Syncademy brings a flood of old content progression raiding on a seasonal level. Let's raid across space and time together!

[Hotelfox]

Chapter Eight: Study Feats
Throw wide the gates! The late summer brought with it a torrential flood of an unexpected kind: as we had just begun bridging the gap between players at different stages of progression through the game by offering two Savage timelines simultaneously, our capacities and ability to handle a heavy influx of new members were suddenly put to the test.

Even though the player flood eventually started to decline, Syncademy's server population has doubled since the beginning of the (unusually long) previous chapter to a total of ~1400 members. A formidable 282 unique players have joined our scheduled raids in the last five months. Luckily, our staff ranks have also received timely reinforcements - an additional recruiter, a few aspiring raid leaders and a new secretary role for all the backstage paperwork. Of course, we remain on the lookout for further helping hands to keep up with the constant growth of our community.

Discord itself also improved and added new features recently. As soon as we unlocked Role Icons on our server, the question immediately arose: could they have a place within Syncademy?
Thus, we came up with the idea to combine several existing systems into an overarching one, akin to "prestige trophies" in other games. The Study Feat trophies are meant to represent the sum of one's achievements and evolve over time.

With the first ever expansion release in Syncademy's history drawing closer, we've decided to do the logical thing and pause raiding for three weeks right after release in order to allow both students and staff members to enjoy the fresh content at their own pace before we take a plunge into the brand-new Extreme Trials and Normal Raid (MIL, of course, as tradition would have it!). For the same reason, we're postponing Syncademy's second anniversary celebration to the time between the release and holiday breaks.

Let's celebrate the Study Feats and travel to the Moon and back together!