I don't think we have enough incentives to join/stay in Free Companies

[Jeeqbit]

You are right that the game isn't hugely FC centric and others have expressed this as something they perceive as a problem. You can get by without an FC even (I think this is good as you said because some people are loners and don't want to be gatekept). I think it's fairly common for MMOs to add guilds as an afterthought - some exp bonuses, a chat, little incentives for new players to join and not much else.

It used to be more needed for raiding because of PFs not being cross-world in Heavensward, so some worlds were actually dead and had no PFs and on the most busy worlds you could run into the same people that trapped you.

But there are many active FCs and these are the sort of activities they do together (you listed many of them):

• Mount farming
• Maps
• Forming a static together or otherwise doing high-end raids together
• Alliance raid (usually doing it together on release days)
• RP events or venues
• Decorating a house together
• Just talking/joking in the chat or exchanging advice
• Doing roulettes together, whether leveling jobs or tomestones
• Doing PvP together
• I don't normally see this, but since you mentioned it, I've seen odd friends group (very rarely) do Eureka together.

Usually no FC does all of those things, but rather some of them. Mine does most of them because it's large. It's heavily contingent on event organizers and people with initiative to start chatting and organize events, otherwise they don't happen.

The only things designed specifically for an FC as far as I can remember are:

• FC buffs to motivate being in the FC to do things.
• FC rooms to motivate being at the FC house to interact.
• Airships and Diadem (but Diadem has been changed since then).

As for leaderboards, the only ones I can think of are on the lodestone, which show various activity lists of what your FC members are doing.

[dspguy]

But there are many active FCs and these are the sort of activities they do together (you listed many of them):

• Mount farming
• Maps
• Forming a static together or otherwise doing high-end raids together
• Alliance raid (usually doing it together on release days)
• RP events or venues
• Decorating a house together
• Just talking/joking in the chat or exchanging advice
• Doing roulettes together, whether leveling jobs or tomestones
• Doing PvP together
• I don't normally see this, but since you mentioned it, I've seen odd friends group (very rarely) do Eureka together.

All very true. My FC does many of those things together. I think the issue with FCs in general is that you don't need an FC to do any of those things. Forgive me for using FFXI as a comparison, but in early iterations of that game, we had linkshells, and you could use one at a time. Many players in a "raiding linkshell" mostly just kept that one active.

It was hard to find people to do missions together without shouting in Jeuno for hours.
It was hard to find people to do dynamis together without shouting in Jeuno for hours.
It was hard to find people to do sky/sea/salvage together without shouting in Jeuno for hours.

In the case of sky and sea, these weren't one day, one hour raids. You had to farm items to spawn the enemies that dropped the better loot. So, you wouldn't want to farm this stuff with randoms, who would just take the pop item and go spawn the sky gods with other people.

The point is - we have duty finder and party finder. That handles pretty much that entire list. The FC buffs are minor at best, in my opinion. In my case, I stay in my FC because I like the people and I like doing content with the people who are there. And I suppose that is enough.