Content geared towards FCs

[Sove92]

They once had an idea for an FC Summoning concept, where roaming primals can be captured for an FC to use later, the primal returning to the overworld after doing so. Nothing has been heard of it for years and it's almost certainly abandoned. Not only does it not fit the setting, anyone can see how incredibly toxic it would become.

The only way for SE to really make FCs good again would be to at first, make them cross-server. The addition of cross-server play has made server-only FCs ever more redundant.

[caffe_macchiato]

Square Enix has been trying very hard to make FFXIV as single player as possible. They’d see FC content as a “burden” to the mythical solo player. Sadly, Square just isn't interested in group content anymore like they used to be. FCs across the North American playerbase have been dead for months unless they RP because there’s simply no reason to log in anymore. Repeatable group content would at least add some much-needed longevity to this game.

And that’s not to mention that Square has indeed made FCs obsolete. Many of us are required to log out and switch DCs to play content. That kills FCs for us. WoW has cross-realm guilds, why can’t we?

[RobynDaBank]

Square Enix has been trying very hard to make FFXIV as single player as possible. They’d see FC content as a “burden” to the mythical solo player. Sadly, Square just isn't interested in group content anymore like they used to be. FCs across the North American playerbase have been dead for months unless they RP because there’s simply no reason to log in anymore. Repeatable group content would at least add some much-needed longevity to this game.

And that’s not to mention that Square has indeed made FCs obsolete. Many of us are required to log out and switch DCs to play content. That kills FCs for us. WoW has cross-realm guilds, why can’t we?

What? WoW doesn't have cross-realm guilds. I think you're thinking about Communities, the parallel of which can be CWLS.

[caffe_macchiato]

What? WoW doesn't have cross-realm guilds. I think you're thinking about Communities, the parallel of which can be CWLS.

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/14296

[Deveryn]

FCs? You mean that content people want to solo?

[kevin_satron]

nope. SE wants to please those players with irl hardworking jobs that only have few hours of game time. and also solo players

[Avoidy]

I wish. Even something like guild missions would go a long way towards making FCs feel like more than linkshells with slightly more functionality. As it stands, it's really difficult to make an objective case for even joining a community FC over making your own solo FC and simply communicating with friends via LS/CWLS, especially with solo fc home ownership being a major incentive.

In Tera, we had guild missions that officers could select from the guild menu. These were really really basic but it was still more than we have in XIV. To put it in XIV terms, the guild leader would pick a mission titled, say, "Run Dun Scaith 8 times." and the quest would begin, and everyone in the FC would see it visible. From that moment on, anyone in the FC who ran Dun Scaith would count towards that 0/8 goal, and if a full 8man squad of FC members went in together, they could finish the quest in a single run, since 8 of them completed it. Doing these quests boosted your guild's rank, and you'd be able to see your guild's ranking in game set against other guilds, so it got kind of competitive. At one point, guild housing was even sort of teased as an incentive to support your guild but the devs dropped it.

In BDO as well, guild quests were implemented in a way that was like "kill 500 of X monster" and anytime anyone in the guild killed that monster, it counted towards the quest. You got like, guild contribution for this or something and then at the end of a certain time period the guild leader would issue payouts that were distributed to every member with people who had higher ranks and higher contributions getting more money back than people who didn't contribute anything.

In this game, there's just nothing. Someone earlier said "if you want to do things with your FC, just do it" in like a "be the change you want to see" kind of way, but the thing about that is it's a two way street. I might want to run random content with people in my FC, but if my FCmates don't see a reason to, say, run puppets bunker in 2023 or something, then they're not gonna agree to do it. Square could incentivize and facilitate group efforts by implementing any of the examples I just mentioned, but they've chosen not to for many years and now here we are. Imagine trying to recruit someone to your community FC in the current year. What can you offer them that they can't just get from a linkshell and a solo FC? I say this as someone in a community FC where our main competition isn't even other FCs sniping our members; it's people just leaving to be in FCs by themselves so they can have specific buffs on demand, their own house, and their own army of submarines that they alone can control, while losing no real socialization aspect since they continue chilling with us in linkshells anyway. The last time I asked someone what they could get out of a community fc that they couldn't get from just having a solo fc and inviting their friends to a linkshell, the answer I got was literally "uhhh FCs have a MotD function," like come on bro.

[Deveryn]

What can you offer them that they can't just get from a linkshell and a solo FC?

Additional worry-free (relatively) housing space at a low price.

Content geared toward FCs would likely end up putting pressure on people to do whatever it is and only that (potentially). You'd have people kicking those that aren't contributing enough. There's already plenty of group content to do out there and you don't have to be in an FC to do it.

[Avoidy]

Additional worry-free (relatively) housing space at a low price.

Content geared toward FCs would likely end up putting pressure on people to do whatever it is and only that (potentially). You'd have people kicking those that aren't contributing enough. There's already plenty of group content to do out there and you don't have to be in an FC to do it.

Housing space that they generally can't even decorate. Whereas if you went the solo FC route, you could simply purchase your own home and have the full range of decorative ability. I will grant you this: with demolition returning, the "worry free" aspect does become relevant, but in my experience most people would rather have their own solo fc home that they can decorate without consideration for anyone else, even if it comes with some worries, over a "community FC" home that just exists and was already decorated by someone else and requires a specific rank to decorate and every change you make might upset others who liked the house as it was, etc. etc.

The rest of your post, I'll just say this. Having come from MMOs with these systems, neither of them had people being kicked for inactivity. Maybe you experienced differently though.

[R041]

...

I think they were mostly talking about FC House 'Rooms'. Which isn't really worry-free tbh. I've seen FCs explode and you lose the 300k + room deco, and I've had to explode other people's rooms. We just need more and larger apartments, and give them a balcony for gardening and other shiz. Not more Wards.

But FC Housing shouldn't compete as a better version of Solo Housing. That's the problem here. Giving additional features because it's an FC house is just bad FOMO design and only encourages players to create Solo FCs. It's like if we only allowed FCs to Treasure Hunt, people would make solo FCs just for that. So whatever if they want a Solo FC fine, but when it's designed to also mechanically take away from the Solo players as well (FC Housing), then it's bad.