Free Company Content

[Saraide]

I feel like you’ve been in some very badly run FC’s, like any content the people interested will turn up and if you have too many you can always run multiple groups. It’s something we commonly do in ours when turnout for raid/dailies/maps are high enough. Ideally this type of content would be scalable and more of a participation focused content. I’m talking about fairy casual content. There could also be rewards for those who participated as well as general rewards as your FC ranks up in the new content that anyone would have access to. People keep trying to make this a single player game and we could honestly use some MMO type content that encourages grouping up.

Why not just make it regular content that doesnt require running it with people from only your own FC (or FC alliance). Then FCs could still run it but any other group of players could also run it. Where does the need to be FC only content come in?

[Avoidy]

I do agree that more "formal" FC activities should be in the game. Since there aren't, is it any wonder that so many solo FCs exist? There's no objective (formal) reason to be in a large one run by other people. Submarines would be a great group activity if the monetary rewards were divvied up by the game itself and not reliant on the good will of 1 person to decide to share the loot.

These threads always attract people who are in those rare FCs where people just do the old stale content together with no incentive and maybe the FC leader even shares submarine payouts with the whole group. And while that's great, it doesn't represent the norm at all, which is why so many people just make shell FCs and do everything themselves. The system needs attention, I agree. Saying that as someone who is currently in a solo FC because it's just objectively better in every way and there's no reason not to unless you're in some unicorn FC with a lot of active people who are really chill. And since the game's own director actively encourages people to quit, GL keeping your players active lmao

[Wanzzo]

I think the devs made the FC system to be like this, with this lack of specific content. The reason, I think, is to not force people to use their FCs just for one way to approach social interactions inside game and to give the feel of liberty of action for everyone that run or is inside a FC. So, it's intentional, i guess.

Maybe, it falls for the players to create such events between FCs. And if the Alliance becomes something real, is for to make things easier to create.

In a way, I like this approach by them most.
So, if you want to give more meaning to your FC, try to make those events and if you cannot, try to, at least, identify what you can do to improve social interactions inside your FC, to the most possible as you can go. And if still you can't find a way or fail in that, well... there are more FCs out there you know u.u

[Wobi]

Well the goal of fostering teamwork is to give a reason for increased engagement and something to work for together as unit. Hopefully this would make it more common for people to want to join in on FC events/etc and FCs like one would be less of a “unicorn”. Perhaps I’m too idealistic, because it seems quite a few free companies out there don’t really strive for teamwork and it’s every one for themselves. It’s not alway a bad thing for some content to require you to group up to obtain rewards. Some of my best memories in FFXI were when our linkshell (guild) finally beat the harder Dynamis bosses. Again, the content can be more casual in nature to lower the bar for entry, but the camaraderie of accomplishing goals with your guild/etc is a high worth chasing.

[Avoidy]

Well the goal of fostering teamwork is to give a reason for increased engagement and something to work for together as unit. Hopefully this would make it more common for people to want to join in on FC events/etc and FCs like one would be less of a “unicorn”. Perhaps I’m too idealistic, because it seems quite a few free companies out there don’t really strive for teamwork and it’s every one for themselves. It’s not alway a bad thing for some content to require you to group up to obtain rewards. Some of my best memories in FFXI were when our linkshell (guild) finally beat the harder Dynamis bosses. Again, the content can be more casual in nature to lower the bar for entry, but the camaraderie of accomplishing goals with your guild/etc is a high worth chasing.

Yeah I agree, it's great. In other MMOs I've played, there were systems in place to make this kind of thing happen semi-naturally. Guild missions were a thing, and while they were kinda grindy it didn't feel that bad because you were doing it with your guildmates. In XIV this sort of camaraderie feels like "rare" stuff because there's legit no reason to run stuff together unless you just happen to be feeling it at the time. Content gets drip fed and then there's like ... 4 months of nothing, so lots of people quit or get burnt out and it just doesn't feel good if you're the one trying to organize things and get people pumped to... *checks notes* do the old raid that nobody cares about, a 27th day in a row. It's rough. I feel for people trying to be the glue that keeps community FCs together. It's rough.

[Wanzzo]

Yeah I agree, it's great. In other MMOs I've played, there were systems in place to make this kind of thing happen semi-naturally. Guild missions were a thing, and while they were kinda grindy it didn't feel that bad because you were doing it with your guildmates. In XIV this sort of camaraderie feels like "rare" stuff because there's legit no reason to run stuff together unless you just happen to be feeling it at the time. Content gets drip fed and then there's like ... 4 months of nothing, so lots of people quit or get burnt out and it just doesn't feel good if you're the one trying to organize things and get people pumped to... *checks notes* do the old raid that nobody cares about, a 27th day in a row. It's rough. I feel for people trying to be the glue that keeps community FCs together. It's rough.

Before playing FFXIV I used to play Dofus, a tactical battle MMORPG made by a french company. There, the Guilds can be part of Alliances and engage in Alliance Wars to control areas (some other MMOs have a similar stuff) in a pvp format. When you are in a area controlled by the alliance where your guild belongs, you will receive a bonus to exp, drops, gatherers, etc. And you can drop a special currency to change for valuables.

People then, can join parties to attack crystals controlled by rival alliances and the victorius part earns prestige for all guilds inside of it. With more prestige, less taxes you pay at the markets. So, to be part of a guild is really interesting for everyone there.

I kinda liked this system. But in order for us to have a similar stuff in FFXIV, a lot of things should be changed, like the pvp. But, this can give us things to imagine... at least

[Melorie]

I would to have fc-related activities that are somewhat... interactive? Maybe an instance where we can farm/upgrade our buffs, level our FC, do stuff that are related to submarine voyages, etc. All the "FC-related" content usually stays in the hand of one or two people. There is very little incentive to not just run a solo FC in this game.

Content gets drip fed and then there's like ... 4 months of nothing, so lots of people quit or get burnt out and it just doesn't feel good if you're the one trying to organize things and get people pumped to... *checks notes* do the old raid that nobody cares about, a 27th day in a row. It's rough. I feel for people trying to be the glue that keeps community FCs together. It's rough.

Indeed. Back when I did try to organize FC-related stuff, there was not much to do besides maps and mount farms and these get stale quickly. At the same time, a lot of players just quit FCs that there is nothing happening. These are ok social activities but I wish there was something that could be done as a group in order to level up the FC, or actually make the FC "grow" somehow.

In a way, I like this approach by them most.
So, if you want to give more meaning to your FC, try to make those events and if you cannot, try to, at least, identify what you can do to improve social interactions inside your FC, to the most possible as you can go. And if still you can't find a way or fail in that, well... there are more FCs out there you know u.u

Back when I was managing an FC, it was really time-consuming. We literally had to think of ways to entertain people. I get that there are many people that enjoy this and dedicate a lot of time to this type of stuff, however I would like the game to give a hand to FC managers and do some sort of content so that people can feel like they're part of the FC and are actually helping it somehow instead of you having a half dozen managers (in a big FC) thinking how to entertain people and set-up stuff (at least in my experience people rarely start things on their own).

[Ath192]

I have an interesting suggestion for this thread. You know how Squadrons have rank up missions in the barracks? basically going forward once your FC reaches current max rank there are rank up missions the FC must take to rank up. Once you've done all of those and you reach max rank again, the last rank degrades, and so you periodically have to do a new mission once a month to attain the max rank once more. This in turn allows the FC to purchase level 3 buffs instead of crafting them. It would give an alternative way for people who enjoy combat to acquire the level 3 buffs.

Or anyways, something along these lines.

[MonteCristo]

I was regaling my FC with tales of the 1.0 era and I remembered a few of the planned but lost updates that were originally slated to happen before the subsequent chaos of retooling the entire game in ARR.

I for one run a rather busy FC with my friend and we’ve long desired more FC content that requires you to actually run with your FC. They had originally planned things like ocean exploration/battles and large scale siege content. We saw things like FC owned ships etc in the mock-ups. I’d be interested to know what sort of content other people would like to see on this vein.

Obviously if such content existed and had good rewards it would likely eliminate smaller Free Companies as members would take off for more established FCs with the members and resources to complete this content, however SE already talked about a solution to this in one of the very early live letters. They had a plan where you could form an alliance with another FC to make an official sister FC and they would be able to join you for Free Company content without changing or having to dissolve their existing Free Company. I feel like this would allow smaller groups to participate in large scale content without losing the smaller FC they have in place.

I’d love to see something like this as I feel it would allow them to create this type of content but have a way to make it accessible to smaller groups. SE had quite a few good ideas for this game and it would be nice to see some of them come to fruition.

I literally made a similar post and got nearly flamed to hell..../grabspopcorn

[Atelier-Bagur]

Weve had this conversation before a while back, but I still take my stance that I wouldnt mind seeing some expanded features or activities for FCs to do.