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

[Shougun]

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.

Ah sorry, I meant the drift from forced socialization. Players did not /like/ that. Edited for clarity.

[VictorSpoils]

Even maps, just join a PF party, no need to talk or coordinate.

And even that content is rendered excruciating by the party aspect. Waiting for people to join up, zone in, fly to their spot, open the map, open the chest, run to the next room, open that chest (twice), roll on loot, open the doors, scream over a rainbow in the first room, get kicked out of the second last room, type "aw shucks" in the chat like it's business as usual, and then sit around while someone suddenly detours to spend worthless tomestones.

[TaleraRistain]

Ah sorry, I meant the drift from forced socialization. Players did not /like/ that. Edited for clarity.

Nope, the drift away from that was definitely not on accident. Post-EQ games made a point to have that as a feature. MMO players were tired of never being able to progress at their own pace.

[Misutoraru]

"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.

This, shouting for an hour to finally have a party with all relevant job to just do levelling.

Then become a race to online if your job is so common to that every one slot have 100s of people fighting for.

Or wait hours just to get enough people able to do a city to city run.

This is a great way of killing off MMO

if people are force to socialise because of content, that “society or community” will not last. I have go though few FC and finally settle down for one and I have been in since HW. We see people taking break but rarely anyone leave. Community should be a group of like minded come together. There might not be a lot of FC oriented activities but we just create ours, we form farming party, raid, from causal contents to high end, and sometimes we just find a spot in residential area and hangout.

Running a FC is not easy but it need people that willing to form a relationship to do it, forcing content will not form those bond

[CidHeiral]

TL;DR: Am I the only one that wishes FC had some guild-type of activities/incentives to play together? Do you have any suggestions regarding this? ;-;

It would definitely be neat to have more built in goals for guilds to work towards but that aside, you can do nearly any content currently in the game with your FC members. You can also make your own little events to get people together like scavenger hunts, glam fashion shows, etc. The main factor is having the initiative to organize everything for your members. Running a successful guild is a lot of work in any MMO.

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

The community finder is surprisingly helpful in that regard.

[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.

[Gokki]

FCs are perfect they way they are - a tool for groups of people to have fun together. If it was mandatory for anything meaningful it would've turned FCs into a toxic environment too often. While most people are nice, the exact worse people for being FC leaders would also be the most numerous, and fighting over FC houses would've been even worse. Heck, one could argue that having an FC house is a huge advantage if you know how to work with submarines.


I have many ideas on how to improve this and other aspects of the game but i'll reserve that for those who care enough to listen.

[Catwho]

Partially related, but I went through 4 free companies before giving up and making my own because it felt like the only reason to be in one (on Maduin at least) was to make gil via airships/submarines, but none of that was ever going to trickle down from the leader or their closest officers, and promotions for greater FC feature access of any kind were never going to happen. (Understandable of course, given you don't want just anybody being able to do anything they want lest it cause irreparable damage.)

You bring up an interesting point. Our FC bank has 30 million gil sitting in it from the airships. I don't really have an easy way to distribute this to the current FC members without completely unlocking the bank, which is risky. It was ostensibly there for our interior design team to be able to buy anything they needed the last time they renovated the house. But until the lead designer gets another bee in her bonnet or inspo from HGTV, it's just sitting there doing nothing.

Do you have any ideas of what could be good resources to purchase with that money to share it with the FC?

Should I send every guild member a million gil? I think most of them are on my friend's list.

[OlafQuintessa]

We run screenshot competitions from time to time and hand out Gil that way. Could also spend it on rare minions and leave them in an open tab of the chest for people to take, like at christmas. We used to have a giveaway bot in our discord that we'd use so people could go in the draw for rare items. Thavnairian onions from the garden would go in an open tab of the chest.

I agree it would be nice to have some fc specific activities in game. How about your own potd in the fc house basement for fc members to use or something like that. It would be fun to collectively explore it and bring back rewards from under the house

[AshtonCrowe]

Never has been a reason to stay in FC, Every single one i've joined only the leader and their officers get any benefit while everyone else is shafted. They will never flow the rewards downwards for any exploration task but will want you to help craft components or help fund the acquisition.

FC's are just drama hubs, One such example;

I used to be part of one where people would marry every single week, Like nonstop just marriages. My buddy got proposed to by one of the officers and i jokingly said i'm gunna steal him from her.

Queue the most unhinged tantrum, Luckily she was only an "Officer" on the discord so i had time to submit evidence to our Guild Leader and she looked like a wackjob but still. That is very common behavior, You don't play along with their nonsense onesided harem fantasy and suddenly you're satan.

I've never married anyone in any video game, I think the concept is useless aside from Roleplayers utilizing it. I wouldn't want to share a house with some random online, nor any storage.

When they don't have Drama they have nonsense like "Participation requirements" you must submit (X) to be part of the FC, Which is another red flag but they always seem to have the most members which i'll never understand, Why waste your time so little timmie (Leader) can play like a streamer?

Solo gameplay with access to NN is better than any FC i've joined, This is my PC account think i joined in 2023? My PS4 account was around during stormblood, Even back then only FC i joined and didn't have problems with was a private FC with a coworker and his wife. Every other one i've joined since has been nonsense, Like middle school but you know these are grown adults.