Content geared towards FCs

[Jeeqbit]

For the argument about MINE, the vast majority of players now were not around for a lot of old content. If you were around in ARR, HW or even Stormblood, great, so was I, but I don't pretend like we are a majority anymore. Whereas the active players were 300,000 to 600,000 then (Lucky Bancho before 4.3), there are up to a million more active players at any given few month period than there were back then (Lucky Bancho latest) and we can't pretend that some of those people from back then didn't quit or take a very long break that they haven't returned from yet.

The problem with discussing MINE in reference to hard content is that most people just want to unsync it. They don't see themselves good enough for it, or they don't have the time for hard content and the associated difficulty of finding a good party, or they just don't want to do something that is regarded as old even though they didn't experience it. A lot of people don't even know what MINE is or understand that these fights actually have mechanics, or how the sync system works. One way or another, the MINE community is very small, but an FC might drag some people into it who would otherwise be too anxious to try.

Something like an eight-man deep dungeon, V&C, treasure, or fishing venture with FC rewards that can't simply be "finished" and thrown away like most patch content.

How about deep dungeons, V&C, treasure and ocean fishing itself? All of these have rewards you can get from doing it a lot instead of just doing it once and I've always seen FCs doing this sort of content even during less active periods.

If content can't be finished, then it's either going to be an endless grind or the lack of reward will make it pointless. Either way, there is no point in doing it then.

[Raven2014]

General consensus seems to be we dont want it locked behind fc meanwhile if implemented correctly it could be a invigorating change to spark more life into the deadness that is absolutely felt by many FCs across all data centers.

Seeing how there are many active FCs around, this sound like an issue with those "dead" FC. At the end of the day, if you want to run and manage a social community, it gonna have to be your own effort. An FC, or a guild (or whatever an MMO call these) have always been a place for people who want to do "existing" activities together, not so they can run some "exclusive" content. Even the MMO call itself "Guild War" didn't do anything like that.

When did our community get so afraid of innovation? Its always no dont touch anything the game is perfect as is for many things that are suggested.

And when did this line become the next favorite gaslighting lately? Oh I want to change something you disagree? You must be afraid of change!

- Bring up the issue of healer and ask them to be changed: literally 90% of the forum gonna support you.
- Bring up things like 2min buff windows and you'll see a split opinion.
- Bring up PvP, and most will agree with you but still gonna disagree 'cause most of the "fixes" is actually about reversing it to a worse state.


But there will be also topic like this one, or the one about Second Wind earlier this month then yeah, most people telling you they don't see a problem because ... well, they don't just see it as a problem, not because they don't want change. And you labeling it innovation doesn't really make it so. And like I said, it seems the counter punch is 9/10 time is always something similar to that above quote.

[Deveryn]

Seeing how there are many active FCs around, this sound like an issue with those "dead" FC. At the end of the day, if you want to run and manage a social community, it gonna have to be your own effort. An FC, or a guild (or whatever an MMO call these) have always been a place for people who want to do "existing" activities together, not so they can run some "exclusive" content. Even the MMO call itself "Guild War" didn't do anything like that.




And when did this line become the next favorite gaslighting lately? Oh I want to change something you disagree? You must be afraid of change!

- Bring up the issue of healer and ask them to be changed: literally 90% of the forum gonna support you.
- Bring up things like 2min buff windows and you'll see a split opinion.
- Bring up PvP, and most will agree with you but still gonna disagree 'cause most of the "fixes" is actually about reversing it to a worse state.


But there will be also topic like this one, or the one about Second Wind earlier this month then yeah, most people telling you they don't see a problem because ... well, they don't just see it as a problem, not because they don't want change. And you labeling it innovation doesn't really make it so. And like I said, it seems the counter punch is 9/10 time is always something similar to that above quote.

I was going to come back and say something like this.

It's such a meme these days that anyone who disagrees "finds things to be perfect". No. I have my gripes, but I pick my battles. Some things are more likely to change than others.

Many ideas I see are just bad or not fully fleshed out. Some are rooted in selfish desires and there's no regard for others who might be affected negatively. When things don't go their way, it's time to attack the opposition, which just confirms the fact that their own argument has no chance... and people wonder how feedback doesn't reach the team.

[Vidu]

Fluff content doesn't move all players...if i was asking about fluff, adding a hairstyle, or something glamour related I'm 90% sure the responses would all be supportive. General consensus seems to be we dont want it locked behind fc meanwhile if implemented correctly it could be a invigorating change to spark more life into the deadness that is absolutely felt by many FCs across all data centers. When did our community get so afraid of innovation? Its always no dont touch anything the game is perfect as is for many things that are suggested.

I dont know about this "sparking life into dead FCs" - if the FC is dead, its probably because people within it dont enjoy playing together, otherwise they'd already do that. So whats the gain of forcing them to do that for some sort of content or reward?

And lets assume that there is content thats FC-exclusive - that content would most likely still require you to organise it. Depending on the size of the FC and the amount of players needed/allowed in the content, you'd need to create a schedudle to make sure that (1) there are enough people to tackle the content and (2) everyone who wants the content is included. You might need to manage jobs, loot/rewards, fair times for everyone so that the person pulling nightshifts has a chance to join as well... Some of these things might not be requiered, depending on the type of content, but the bottomline is: a lot of oragnising would be involved.
Which is something "dead" FCs probably shy away from in the first place. Just having FC-exclusive content doesnt automatically makes it accessiable to all FCs (in the sense of them actually being capable or willing to do it - and I'm not talking about solo-FCs). The "hard" part about getting your FC to do stuff together and to have it lively is, in my opinion at least, not finding some content but organising it. Thats also the part the game cant do for you - in any case, FC-exclusive content or not, you'll have to do that yourself. FC-exclusive content wont just "magically" make your FC play together and it wont turn it automatically into a pleasent social experience, either - I'll repeat my point: If you enjoy playing with the people in your FC (or if you desire to be in an active FC), you'll put in the effort to achieve that. You'll need to put in that effort even if there is FC-exclusive content (probably even more so). If you dont enjoy that, I dont think being bribed into it is going to be healthy for the FC and the indivual players long term...

[Vidu]

Fluff content doesn't move all players...if i was asking about fluff, adding a hairstyle, or something glamour related I'm 90% sure the responses would all be supportive. General consensus seems to be we dont want it locked behind fc meanwhile if implemented correctly it could be a invigorating change to spark more life into the deadness that is absolutely felt by many FCs across all data centers. When did our community get so afraid of innovation? Its always no dont touch anything the game is perfect as is for many things that are suggested.

Because there are a few thoughts I cant get out of my head, I figured I might as well write them down - you mention content being implemented correctly and while one could argue that its not the players job to figure out what that would look like, I think its interesting to think about what "content implemented correctly" could even be.


The first question one has to ask here is: What even is "content" in this context?
Broadly speaking I could see two different general categories this "content" could fall into: One would be content that requiers the FC to actively play together, similar to a dungeon-type of content where everyone needs to be online at the same time and work together in clearing the content in question.
The other one would be a shared goal that everyone can work towards by themself - along the lines of earning FC-credits, increasing the FC-rank, building something in the workshop or saving up for a house together. Some of these things are even passive to a degree - you earn credits and build up rank by just doing stuff you'd do if you werent in the FC, but the FC profits from that aswell.
(A third option I could imagine would be something where just being in an FC grants you access to something like a vendor or a special area)

While saying "Obviously, we want all types of content" is a valid answer, I think thinking about what type of content one even means is worthwhile - a connected question would be: What do you hope this content achieves? Bringing people together in the same place, at the same moment, interacting with each other? Or something everyone can contribute towards at their own pace?

The second big question I want to raise however is: For how many people is this content designed?
If the content is designed for FCs, I think every legitimate FC should be able to participate in it - meaning that we dont need to worry about shell- or solo-FCs. The game requiers 4 people to found an FC (if memory servers right), so the smallst FC we need to consider is a group of 4 people. The maximum amount of people is 512.
So thats our range - we need content that can support 4 to 512 people. In reality most FCs are going to be somewhere in between of course, but thats not relevant when thinking about content thats supposed to be for FC because it should be for all FCs.

So, looking at these numbers and knowing that zones/instances cant support 512 at once (I think Eureka and Bozja had a maximum amount of 128 people or something along those lines?) we would need to rule out any content that has everyone play together at once if we want to be really fair.
We dont have to be, of course, and can just say that not everyone in the FC can participate in the content at the same time, even if everyone is online at the same time - and that it would be up to the FC-leaders to decide who gets to do the content and who doesnt.
At the same time we need to think of small FCs, so the content would need to be designed in such a way that even 4 people could clear it - or it would need to allow for non-FC-members to fill in and help out (thats how the original diadem was btw - you needed to take an airship and only a member of the FC could do that but you were able to take non-FC-members with you). But wouldnt that defeat the purpose of gating the content behind FCs in the first place...?

Then the question of jobs and levels - would everyone be able to participate, starting at level 1? Would you need level 50, 60, 70, 90...? An ilvl? Progress to a specific part of the story? Do you need specific jobs? Or could you have 4 level 1 archers do the content? We could have a whole seperate skill-system, like in PvP, that puts everyone on equal footing, of course. Maybe paired with special actions like in Eureka, Bozja and Criterion to allow for parties to go in without a tank or healers, but that still leaves the question if the difficulty should be geared towards someone at endgame or someone just starting out.

...and when I'm just looking at these few points, I'm wondering again: What would be the true benefit of this in the end? Or rather: What would be the benefit of desiging FC-only content when it requires so many hoops to jump through - maybe except for just adding another type of FC-credits that everyone gets to grind together. What would be the benefit to lock Eureka-like content behind FCs? Supplying us with FC-only content would still require the FC to work together, to organise the when and how and who. It would potentially exclude indivuals within the FC (Sorry buddy, we're already 24 people - maybe next time!) or it would exclude whole FCs (dont have 24 people? Better leave that FC!).

I dare say that one of the most challenging parts of raiding with a static is the organisation, not the fight. The more people you can draw from the tackle content together, the better in my book - I want to play the game, not spent most of my time trying to find people to play with. By limiting content to your FC, you're limting the amount of people you can draw from - for no good reason.
Each time a new 24 man raid comes out my FCs tries to organise a full blind run - everyone from the FC is invited, but if we dont get 24 people together its not an issue, we can just invite friends from other FCs or use PF (heck, even DF for the last few). If that wasnt an option, it would mean that the 19 of us who did show up and wanted to play together are now locked out of the content - you can scale those numbers however you want btw, I'm just using this as an example. How would that be better than what we currently have?

[Burmecia]

well, i do enjoy treasure map parties with fc

[NekoMataMata]

Why would FCs suddenly not be hives of drama anymore? They arent drama hives specifically because there is no content gated behind FCs. They are hives of drama because the people making them up are hives of drama.

Oh, I don't know... Maybe because if FCs actually mattered then recruitment would also matter, and it would end up being important to keep your FC clean of it?

There would still be drama, you can never be rid of that, but people in FCs would make a lot more effort to avoid it.

There's no real reason to be in a FC right now outside of buffs and the workshop(which only ranks get access to anyways). This means it's a mostly social group, and that people hop between them until they find the right one or they decide that they don't need one.

If there was exclusive content for a FC suddenly most people would likely need one, but FCs would also need willing members for that content. This means there could be competitive recruitment, and competitive recruitment would lead to FCs attempting to reduce drama and treat their members better. Otherwise their FC could end up with a bad image, and therefore struggle to recruit members for said content.

[Deveryn]

Oh, I don't know... Maybe because if FCs actually mattered then recruitment would also matter, and it would end up being important to keep your FC clean of it?

There would still be drama, you can never be rid of that, but people in FCs would make a lot more effort to avoid it.

There's no real reason to be in a FC right now outside of buffs and the workshop(which only ranks get access to anyways). This means it's a mostly social group, and that people hop between them until they find the right one or they decide that they don't need one.

If there was exclusive content for a FC suddenly most people would likely need one, but FCs would also need willing members for that content. This means there could be competitive recruitment, and competitive recruitment would lead to FCs attempting to reduce drama and treat their members better. Otherwise their FC could end up with a bad image, and therefore struggle to recruit members for said content.

Competitive recruitment sounds like more shout spam. No thank you.

[VerdeLuck]

Oh, I don't know... Maybe because if FCs actually mattered then recruitment would also matter, and it would end up being important to keep your FC clean of it?

There would still be drama, you can never be rid of that, but people in FCs would make a lot more effort to avoid it.

There's no real reason to be in a FC right now outside of buffs and the workshop(which only ranks get access to anyways). This means it's a mostly social group, and that people hop between them until they find the right one or they decide that they don't need one.

If there was exclusive content for a FC suddenly most people would likely need one, but FCs would also need willing members for that content. This means there could be competitive recruitment, and competitive recruitment would lead to FCs attempting to reduce drama and treat their members better. Otherwise their FC could end up with a bad image, and therefore struggle to recruit members for said content.

Even if there was a need to make FCs be more than they are now, taking a game where they don't play a big role and deciding that almost 10 years into the life of that game you want to fundementally change that is not a very good or welcome idea. You don't shake up your core player base like that, that's how you get people leaving in droves because the game they used to like suddenly veered in a different direction. FCs are a social group and that's fine. You join one either created by your friend group or it becomes your in-game friend group and that's it. There's nothing wrong with how it is now. Any attempt to drastically change that won't be well received by the general player base.

And that's all aside from the fact that any content that would be gatekept behind FC only participation would be carved directly out of what would normally get released to the general player base. We'd be getting fewer of something else in order for it to be saved for FCs, and anyone not in a large active FC would effectively get less content released in the game going forward.

[Raoabolic]

The game has moved to catering to single players and small groups only. The backlash they would get from making anything new FC only would be huge. Personally, I wish they would because there seems to be little reason to join a FC unless you just want some social interaction. You can get the FC buffs from your squad and the airship/submarine rarely bring in items that can be enjoyed by the FC in general. It's a weird system and considering the track record the devs have I doubt they are going to make anything FC exclusive.