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

[Shougun]

This, this, this!! You can solo the game all the way to the end, they've taken the social aspect out of the game.

I don't think it's entirely companies faults, I think a lot of people are stuck with the good ol days and reality is many don't actually want that anymore.

"Remember when I had to wait 45 minutes for a boat, to fly to Juno and shout for 3 hours to form a party" ahhhhh.... Those were the days! Lol

Now that doesn't mean not making social encouragement, I think that is important and I definitely think we could do quite a bit more. But I also think people want to be 'able' to stand in a crowd, feel like they're in a 'society' and not perform any special social interactions to do so.

I think players themselves have created in many ways the "o/" and "gg" is the only thing said the whole dungeon.

I've some ideas that might press against it.. but honestly I still think many want to be social without being social. Hence DF is so popular, and if you removed it and forced PF you'd probably be lambasted.

[YumieYumiki]

The game sadly is not constructed from the ground up to facilitate the formation of FCs.

On FF11 the game was really tough after level 10, and you had to use the /sea function and form a 2-3 hour long levelling party to continue past that. You have to be active in talking to people to form or get into that party, if you are a wallfly standing around with your invite flag on then you will never get invited and progress unless you are a white mage. Logging in night after night, eventually you start recgonizing the same names, people who are on the same leg of their journey as you, so you form a linkshell (guild) to progress together and it grew from there. As early as level 20 you are forming 18 man alliances to take on the level 25 bandersnatches and skeletons in Gusgen Mines to spend 2 hours farming magicked skulls for everyone to unlock their subjob. And then your farming coffer keys to get every linkshell member's job armor, or doing the story missions together, or farming the BCNMs. You can't solo in this game. Once you reached level 30 you could unlock beastmaster and then slowly level by yourself, but you still had to do the story BCNM fights and the level uncap quests with other people.

That sounds awful. Forced socialization is bad and leads people to consider other players mere tools to facilitate their own progression, which in turn leads to toxicity whenever they underperform (go read the tales from df sub reddit to see how much people already focus on all the small mistakes that others do, rather than healthy socialization). Or simply look at chaotic raiding.

Additionally some people don't like to make excessive commitment towards other players and prefers others not to count on us so that we are completely free to stop playing or not to play regularly.

[ryouma17]

if there was a better way to send items to my alts then i wouldnt be in any free company, the only reason i made my FC was so i could send stuff to my alts without worrying about someone sniping it on the marketboard. i have a FC house but i dont use it for anything except for afking while i que for roulettes

[Kaurhz]

Everything to do with FCs is a gameplay issue, more than anything.

Anything you can do with an FC, you can do just as conveniently through PF, or other means like community discords. Then you also have the issue that a lot of communities, even local FC ones, are typically just insular groups of people, or people that have formed their own clique, which is fine, but it doesn't go well because it does make it difficult to acclimate to an FC. Even the buffs are kind of... "ehh..." since you can get ones just as good as G3 buffs through the Squadron.

They did try making FC exclusive stuff, such as the original Diadem, but it didn't really bode well at the time, and after HW this game has been scared of innovating in any capacity, so it's more just maintaining status quo and keeping the treadmill running than it is about developing a social experience, or an environment that lends itself to such.

[Divinemights]

To make a FC viable you need to lock a lot of content to be group oriented or at least FF11 alike
Trust me, this forum would flood with river of tear if ever happened

[Zarkovitch]

Going to say it,

Recruiting fc members is way harder to recruit than ultimate static.

[Zyama]

Going to say it,

Recruiting fc members is way harder to recruit than ultimate static.

Also it would be great if there was a way to know if a player was trial or not, i've sent tells to people and never gotten replies and i'm fairly certain that's because they aren't able to, this needs to be fixed.

[TaleraRistain]

FFXI was niche even in its heyday. It wouldn't command anywhere close to the audience needed to justify the cost. People nowadays are simply too accustomed to matchmaking/instances and all the creature comforts alongside them. I can all but guarantee if XVII were an MMO like XI where having a party was required to go anywhere or do anything, it would die within the year.

If word got out about that aspect and it even got off the ground in the first place. MMOs have just moved beyond that. Back in 1999 with EQ and then XI patterned itself a lot off EQ when it came out in 2002, you didn't have things like random matchmaking and tools that allowed you to party up easily. So guilds in EQ (not sure what they were in IX) were essential. You were also locked to your own server in EQ. So the community you had there was the community available to you. The forced socialization aspect is what eventually drove so many away to EQII and WoW when they both came out the same month in 2004.

And there's plenty of opportunity for socialization in XIV. It's just socialization that players are given a choice in. I can't see modern MMO players who aren't already playing the games with forced socialization going back to that.

[Shougun]

If word got out about that aspect and it even got off the ground in the first place. MMOs have just moved beyond that. Back in 1999 with EQ and then XI patterned itself a lot off EQ when it came out in 2002, you didn't have things like random matchmaking and tools that allowed you to party up easily. So guilds in EQ (not sure what they were in IX) were essential. You were also locked to your own server in EQ. So the community you had there was the community available to you. The forced socialization aspect is what eventually drove so many away to EQII and WoW when they both came out the same month in 2004.

And there's plenty of opportunity for socialization in XIV. It's just socialization that players are given a choice in. I can't see modern MMO players who aren't already playing the games with forced socialization going back to that.

A lot of people, devs and players, think that the drift from rigid socialization happened by accident or bad game choices, but in many ways players wanted it.


Like I don't want to be forced to find a group, I just want one thrust upon me when I ask for one- like an Uber lol. I don't want to chat 20 minutes after the dungeon, I want to go run some more content. IF I WANT to then I will, and you have given me the tools to do that. You're not missing it because you failed, you're missing it because people don't WANT to.


Those who are reminiscing about being forced into social situations, imo, should force themselves to. There are sometimes fair points like "I would if I could" and then maybe we have a problem, but when it's "I want you to have to do it too, even though you don't want to, I swear the thing I love you will love too" and it's like no, I don't love what you love - stop.

[TaleraRistain]

A lot of people, devs and players, think that it happened by accident or bad game choices, but in many ways players wanted it.


Like I don't want to be forced to find a group, I just want one thrust upon me when I ask for one, like an Uber lol. I don't want to chat 20 minutes after the dungeon, I want to go run some more content. IF I WANT to then I will, and you have given me the tools to do that. You're not missing it because you failed, you missing it because people don't WANT to.


Those who are reminiscing about being forced into social situations, imo, should force themselves to. There are sometimes fair points like "I would if I could" and then maybe we have a problem, but when it's "I want you to have to do it too, even though you don't want to, I swear the thing I love you will love too" and it's like no, I don't love what you love - stop.

Oh forced socialization in EverQuest was absolutely not on accident. It was part of The Vision from the developers.

And people who never experienced that really don't get why forced socialization is so bad. They go into Eureka or Bozja and they call for a groups for an hour or two, then go out and run some roulettes. They don't realize it was the *entire game* that was like that. Anything you wanted to do, you're wasting time just getting the group together or getting a spot in a group. You couldn't solo mobs if you weren't certain classes. And even with crafting, most materials came from mobs or group or raid content.

People can absolutely eschew Duty Finder and put all their parties together completely manually by going and talking to people or shouting in the zones. Nothing is stopping them. I challenge them to do that and nothing else (no crafting, no gathering, no Gold Saucer when you get bored of shouting) and see how entertaining it is.