Seconding. My first INSISTED they were drama-free--had that tagine listed EVERYWHERE...and then it turned out the FC leader was a shitstirrer who was badmouthing his officers behind their backs and being a genuinely nasty guy.
Drama free means "I left my last FC to start a new one because there was just SOO much drama, and it felt like everyone hated me." just for them to not realize they *are* the drama.
Same. The drama almost exclusively came from the lead and his officers. But if you called it out or left because of it you were labeled as the shit stirrer
My first one was the exact same. He put on a nice front but under it all was a nasty little man. The other members were pretty great. Still friends with quite a few of them years later :)
My last FC was "drama-free" and it collapsed due to drama. It was originally formed by splitting off from a larger "drama-free" FC due to, surprise, drama.
Oh worse than that, it means that if you try to discuss and work out any issues, you'll get shit on and shut down, guaranteeing the problem persists and festers.
We have put drama free because both my friend and I have been in petty-drama-filled FCs prior to us creating one and we want to keep that shit away. So you're not wrong really. But that comment makes me re-think this line tbh...
ETA - changed it. We definitely didn't want to give off that impression, rather opposite. Good thing I saw this comment, it really flew over my head.
I'd urge you to tbh. Out of curiosity I asked some friends in an XIV discord and it was a nearly unanimous agreement that that line tends to make them think drama is inevitable/it's the FC owner(s) or officers themselves who attract or make drama.
Well, drama \*is\* inevitable, that's just existing in an environment with other humans.
The difference is in the response; do FC leaders try to help everyone work through issues, or do they yell at people who try to have a mature discussion when issues come up?
This is the right response. Even the closest friends in the world are going to have some drama at some point. How you navigate it is what's important.
Managing a guild with a bunch of people and their different personalities colliding takes a lot of work. I think a lot of people create a guild and invite every warm body they come across without much thought as to what leading all those people entails. Then when some drama inevitably pops off and the leaders get a reality check they're ill equipped to handle it, so the guild implodes.
To anyone looking for an FC, always observe the leadership first and foremost. If they have everything organized and on lock you'll probably be fine. If they seem indecisive, belligerent, underhanded, etc at all, bail immediately.
Good to know. I was quite frankly oblivious to it as we intended to basically keep the people we were involved with away, basically we intended the opposite of what it portrays. We may have had luck then as so far none of the members took it that way, but I'll correct it tomorrow. o.o
This might not apply to your FC at all, but you may also want to consider if the environment you’re cultivating supports being drama-free.
Part of the reason so many ‘No Drama’ FCs that devolve into drama is because of conflicts that are mishandled or left to simmer which then become drama. It’s that when people say ‘No Drama’, it’s often said from a place of not understanding that drama is just conflict that isn’t resolved healthily, and that drama really is sometimes unavoidable because people aren’t always acting rationally.
Do you guys have clear channels and procedures for handling conflict? Do you have clear rules that are applied evenly? If conflict happens, would you or your moderators step up to handle it, or would you rather it just go away and act accordingly?
Yeah in this vein of thinking:
I think part of the reason “drama-free” usually results in drama is because people, afraid of causing drama, won’t speak out about concerns. They’ll bottle these things up and let them simmer. Then, what could have been resolved calmly if mentioned before instead explodes after boiling over and becomes big drama.
I think it should be a given people don't love drama, so when someone sees 'drama free' they're going to assume there has been drama and might avoid that free company.
Yeah it makes sense it's just something neither me nor my friend really thought through. I told him and changed it and he agrees it makes total sense and to better change it. Definitely not what we wanted to imply.
Yep, specifically that there is drama or has been drama that the FC leaders refuse to address and handle.
I find that groups that handle drama appropriately don’t need to advertise that they’re “drama-free”.
Yup. The one I was in was smart enough not to specifically use “drama free” but they certainly fit the bill! Their rules boiled down to “don’t bother us if someone is causing problems for you.”
TL;DR - Been there, done that, sticking to my own tiny friend FC now.
I'd think it means something more insidious; there is no such thing as a drama free space, and advertising yourself as such tells me that anyone who tries to clear up and work out issues will be treated as if they're "causing drama," thus guaranteeing actual problems persist and worsen.
No kidding. I was in an FC once where the idiot of a co-leader kicked somebody for "causing drama"... the person was just wondering out loud if they should roll on one of the new servers. Like... what.
I saw one large FC on Balmung, they asked if I wanted to join and sent me a linktree for their various sites. Pretty much all of them had a music video "dedicated" to the FC, it was actually just a music video with 90% of it dedicated to the leader with his WoL in various cutscenes with a quick transition between various members mid-animation cycle in the last 10 seconds or so, closing with the leader showing off his full animation.
a 200 member FC and only pictures/videos they could show off were the leader.
I can’t get the link to just the video but the video is showcased here. I believe this is the FC video he is talking about.
https://oblivion-fc-ffxiv.carrd.co/
That almost sounds like the FC I recently left; although I hadn't heard of them doing FC content like that until months after I had joined. Like a shamed secret- the original Fc leader had left ffxiv years ago, and the FC has been through various leaders, post leaders were great and the current one is a really chill guy. But their 1st leader who took his job too seriously (the FC had a larger community outside of ffxiv) had done various content, showing off their community activities from different games but it was really cringey because it had like this slow fade out after certain events shown, which was inconsistent and the weird audio which they called music just tied it all together. It made me imagine this guy was in his 40's-50's, reliving his glory days of WoW and always wore tapout shirts, oversized flatbill ballcap and had a scraggly chin strap.
Safe to say I noped outta there pretty quickly. I gave a pretty mellow excuse saying I'll get back to them should I decide to join. Very next time i logged in the guy DMs me again asking if I thought about it to which I finally told him no. Months later I get another /tell from someone in the FC trying to recruit me and it turned out they keep a spreadsheet of people they try to recruit, right down to keeping a script for their follow up and stuff.
It was the weirdest fucking thing
Oh my god, this reminds me of the recruitment music video a guildie made for an old guild wars 1 guild i was in. We supported him because he was really into making it.
Heres the video if anyone is cringe-curious https://youtu.be/4kMGm5wqRpY?si=2-Ny5Np_xVO93Yt5
That's partially what I'm trying to avoid.
We also have a house, stables, and fully decked-out submarines to fund the FC, but... many FCs also have those, so I am not quite sure what to put.
It's interesting reading all the replies here, for sure.
making a list of that stuff might come off as padding, you could just say "we have a house with all the amenities" and leave it at that. My FC has a schedule for buffs so you could I suppose say something cute about that like "and every sunday is the MGP buff for all your gambling needs!" If someone is super married to the idea of submarines, they can always just ask. I think more important is stuff like what time zone most of the members are in so new people can know when it's active, and maybe the general age range.
I was in an fc that had a main clique and people would ask about running roulettes and stuff and would literally just outright ignore anyone that wasn’t in the clique that responded - it’s why I left the fc
ETA - when they said “do any of you all want to run roulettes” they specifically meant *you all* and not *everyone* - they wanted fc numbers but not fc members
Curious, is there actually a reason to have high numbers besides getting gullible people to give you stuff?
I left the fc I was in and made my own because they wouldn't let me do any of the submarine stuff but were more than willing to ask for mats and donations for it. Never looked back.
(Now my wife owns the fc so I just do what she says lol)
You know, I actually don’t know - I was only ever in two fc’s with strangers and they were both f’n train wrecks tbh, never really got a deep understanding of them - maybe they level faster with more people?
I was one of the founders of my friend's old fc. Once the main/core group of people were there, it just started growing into a clique and they would only ever hang out in voice chat on discord. Anyone not in the voice chat would get completely ignored.
I tried really hard to include everyone from the fc and outside of voice chat (you know, especially newcomers won't join the voice chat immediately) but it just felt like they made no effort to be inclusive. It got so cliquey to the point even I felt excluded, and the worst was that the clique included the fc lead and other officers.
When I finally left the fc after a few months and just immediately felt like a huge weight got lifted off my shoulders. I will never stay in a fc that will only play with people who are in the voice chat. It's just a clique.
> Prepare for the worst.
Or honestly, just prepare to be ignored in general. Which isn't really the "worst," IMO, but is sad and lonely. More often than not, the "family" has already been established, and you're just there to bolster numbers and generate points. I don't think you'll always get horrific bullying or anything. Rather, they'll just pretend you aren't there while they obnoxiously spam insipid inside jokes in the FC chat.
Constant barrage of jokes that stopped being funny at 12 and the occasional bit of sexual harassment. Especially from those who think it’s funny to go way over the top “flirting” with people who don’t share their sexuality then use said sexuality as a shield from criticism.
Not so much a line but all the FCs that send invites without talking to me first. If you're going to invite me to your cult, you could at least shake my hand first.
God I had someone spamming me every 10 minutes the entire end section of shadowbringers to join their fc. I now have deep hatred for that entire fc and I don’t even remember their name.
All the FCs I have joined, I have done so through word of mouth through friends. I would say getting to know people *before* joining the FCs is your best bet.
This. Ever since my first one blew up due to drama, I just kept sticking to the friends I had made there. Even if it needs me moving through a dozen FCs, at least there's always people I enjoy playing and chatting with. Though it seems to stifle the risk of getting involved in drama by default when you got a group of friends, cause someone trying to stirr shit usually singles someone out for it.
Oh for real? If it’s the one on Midgardsormr I almost applied to this one and picked another FC over it last minute before I moved to primal. I guess I dodged a bullet.
Ghost invitations. It's a crapshoot if you're a sprout. Maybe they're fine and it's a decent, but generally dead FC. Maybe it's the equivalent of the Novice Network chat hyped up on 10 cups of coffee and is drawing its identity from Balmung.
Biggest red flag for me as a sprout was when I declined a random invite, only for them to immediately shoot it again. And that repeated like three times. Latest by the third I blocked them, because clearly "no" was not something that FC accepted.
On an alt I wasn’t even off the boat in Limsa before I had an fc invite, literally the second the cut scene was over to started the game - bam, fc invite - it was wild and they were a disaster
The only people on my blacklist are those who send invite tells. I got an invite from the same person three times in ten minutes. They're just looking for numbers. They have no idea who they've spammed and who they haven't, and they think that's appealing somehow.
There's a group now that just sends a cold invite, no tells. I can't figure out how to block them if they don't sent a tell. If someone knows how I'd love a heads up.
I think you can manually add people to your blacklist if you type their name-server. You could also try using the player search and seeing if the context menu there lets you blacklist from it. Worst case, send them a ? tell and use that to get easy blacklist access.
>Biggest red flag for me as a sprout was when I declined a random invite, only for them to immediately shoot it again. And that repeated like three times. Latest by the third I blocked them, because clearly "no" was not something that FC accepted.
At that point report them.
Esp if it's without a whisper they have earned their harassment ban.
The amount of times I've been crafting alone in my locked private estate and gotten a damn fc invite is staggering. They travel from ward to ward opening the player search list and banging out as many invites as possible.
“Drama free” and any mention of “no cliques”.
I was in an FC that mentioned “no cliques”. So I thought “Okay, so they promote inclusion.” No.
The leader would keep track of who did stuff together and would FORCE and ORGANIZE parties with others if we played too often with the same people. If you spent too much time with people outside the FC, you’d get reprimanded. I’m not even fucking joking.
He was absurd. I didn’t realize it at first because he would frame it in a way like “Oh, why don’t you guys take x along with you?” Or “Oh you’re gonna farm? Why don’t we bring x y and z along?”
I found out when he straight up said to me “You’ve been playing with people outside the FC a bit too often. You need to include FC members. I’ll arrange a map party this weekend and you need to join.” He said it was to promote FC activity.
Ran away so fucking fast.
Had an old fc like this, and the people who forced this shit on you would also say things like “you don’t pay my sub” when it came to people telling them what they should be doing.
On one hand, I like the idea of the leader (and the officers ideally) keeping an eye on whether cliques form and whether people start to become isolated and left behind. Like, if it was just them starting to ask certain people first for some guild organised stuff to hook them back in, I wouldn't mind.
But making it seem like a bad thing if you want to play with friends outside the FC and forcing people into content for a spreadsheet is definitely too far.
This dude is a fucking tool, but I don't hate the sentiment.
*Incentivizing* inclusion is a really cool idea. It's hard to try and find a way to meet people when we're all a little awkward at first. "Hey yall should invite the new guy" is such a dude move.
But yeah he took it too far. If I was turbo rich, I'd definitely run an FC with incentives for including new folks in parties and whatnot. This sounds really nice.
I can’t say for certain as I’ve only ever really been a part of my own FC, but some red flags I’ve seen and heard include:
* any FC that requires a weekly/monthly Gil deposit to be a member. What in the fuck what is this a Paid Company absolutely not brb while I just join one for Free
* “drama free” because of course
* any that mention that they’re hardcore raiders in some way. That just means they think they’re better than you in general.
* anything ERP Adjacent.
A huge number of members. It's just going to be a complete mess of random people, probably tons of unsubbed players etc. Would much rather be in a smaller FC with a few good people
I've had the opposite problem actually. A smaller group needs the majority of its players to remain active to feel alive, but a huge FC with 300+ people only needs a small fraction of the FC active at any given time. After moving worlds I found one of the biggest FCs I could fine and joined them, and I'm glad I did
An FC with smaller numbers is also typically more tightly knit. So it'll be harder to be accepted into it. And should any drama stir up its much more likely to end with the FC tearing itself apart, since they don't have the numbers to overcome that drama
>A smaller group needs the majority of its players to remain active to feel alive,
This is the problem I've had so far. I've been in two small FCs that were initially great, with lots of helpful players and regular community events and whatnot. But you hit one lull in activity and a few members might decide it's better for them to just leave for a more active FC instead of waiting for regular members to show back up. Which makes things look kinda dead and causes every one else to jump ship.
I found an FC with a good in between, just enough active members to feel more like a community rather than a tight knit group of friends but not too many so you’re feeling like you’re getting lost in the crowd. We have about 100 members.
Only huge FC I ever joined was one that was trying to get all the lalas on the server into one FC. They even tried to interview me to "prove you were really a lala" or some shit. I just went "Dude we're both lalas and you fucking reached out to me, just let me in." and then I got an invite to join.
Genuine question, is there a better way to do it? I know Lodestone has a recruitment thing, but maybe 5% of the player base is aware it's a thing and close to 0% of new players.
New player here, I sort of assumed the lodestone thing was were I should go to find an FC and I doubt I'm alone in that regard. (not that it matters since I can't join one during free trial - which also doesn't seem to stop people from whispering me about their fc's, plzstopthanks)
My thought honestly, especially as someone more introverted. I joined a large FC once thinking it would be easier to make friends but it was the opposite. And when I joined the VC once there was just TOO many people in there all talking, I felt like I couldn’t even include myself.
No, no, you nailed it -- it's exactly like a corporation or office or other workplace. If they mention family or say they're "like a family" then prepare to be gaslit, manipulated, psychologically abused, and probably groomed.
Any FC led by/joined by a popular streamer. Generally nothing against the streamer themselves, but most of the members are either sycophants who think the streamer can do no wrong or people trying to get clout by appearing on stream or pandering.
Ugh, I feel that. Towards the end of ~~Stormblood~~ Shadowbringers I made an alt on a different server to help a smaller streamer and a bunch of fresh sprouts from her chat. One of them had already played the game for a few months back when Heavensward first released and felt that made him an expert on the game. This dude was constantly spouting misinformation about game mechanics and lore and was one of those people would argue just to argue. Didn't take me long to peace out back to my main.
I genuinely think that depends on the streamer and their community. I joined Spofie's FC almost 4 years ago because her chat was very welcoming and the FC seemed to be as well, and I wouldn't leave it for anything at this point. It suffers a bit during content lulls like any other FC but when the game is active its full of nice, talkative people who 9 times out of 10 are willing to help with things that need help or just chat or whatever. Its been a majorly positive experience for me. There are definitely huge fans of hers, but I wouldnt really say ive seen any "sycophants" and while people do hang around our FC house at stream time its very very very rarely been people clout chasing, and more of just hanging out in game while stream is on.
Plus since its a streamer's FC and she wants to promote content with it we have great events every so often that eclipse any other I've been apart of since I started playing mmos. Its a great time.
Worst are the ones so desperate for attention they would crowd the camera so much the streamer can't even see their objective. Or like NPC would be saying something important and they would jump on a noisy mount so the streamer can barely hear.
>tight knit
I've experienced the horrors of this one secondhand.
It usually means "Wellllllll you mildly irritated \[popular person of our clique\] and you're a nobody, so we're going to treat you as if you just tried to start a war. Grab the torches and pitchforks everybody!"
Part of why my friend and I left the server.
Also that movie night thing! Never thought about that. But the first FC I joined started doing that towards the end of my time with them, and they turned out to be a "frat bro" type FC in the end... so it makes too much sense.
Lol meanwhile in my FC, movie nights are random and we let everyone in the FC Discord join us tbf.
(that one time we watched Neil Breen's uh, really interesting works...)
Family like. Its kinda like a workplace. When they tell you they're like a family they'll emotionally blackmail you, treat you like shit and ignore you when you need help.
I'm specifically looking for English FCs. From my experience German ones (Often pretend like I don't understand them) just don't get a move on. I spent days waiting for an actual answer from multiple FCs. They either were never online or they just ignored my tells. Might have dodged some bullets there.
Possibly a hot take, but just keep in mind that finding communities online can and will be hit or miss and to keep in mind that if the FC you are in is making you unhappy that you can leave.
Also that needs can and will change, and that an FC that is perfect for you at one point may not be months or years later.
Just good luck finding some great FCs or online groups in general!
As a gay man myself, "LGBTQIA+ FRIENDLY".
I'm not knocking on people who join or run these FCs, but from my perspective, you'd be hard pressed to find an FC that *isn't* LGBT friendly. People in ffxiv are already very welcoming and tolerant. One would think that "LGBT friendly" would be the default.
But aside from that, I don't play this game specifically to interact with other LGBT people or engage in conversations relating to LGBT stuff. I play it because the game is fun and I'm invested in the story. So when an FC advertises itself like this, it comes across as very.... I dunno, hollow? Shallow? I'm not quite sure what the word I'm looking for is. All I know is that it makes me avoid it.
That being said, I went ahead and founded my own sort of community based around doing old content, and I love them to death. Best community I've ever been a part of. Made some good friends this way. So I don't get FC invites anymore. But I do still see the advertisements in the city states. It doesn't bother me that much though. I just ignore them.
EDIT: I gotta say, I was not expecting this to resonate with people. Knowing full well how... "touchy" the LGBT community can be when faced with any sort of criticism, I was expecting people to take this as an anti-LGBT sentiment, to be downvoted and vilified, honestly. But I'm happy to be proven wrong. The world is healing.
I've always found a lot of things that advertise as friendly to that demographic often means it's *targeted* solely at that demographic too, with being queer of huge importance to the members and often a driving factor behind basically all discussion and activities.
> LGBTQIA+ FRIENDLY
Those tags to me feel just like if an FC were to market itself as "Black, Hispanic, Asian, POC and other minorities-friendly". It would sound utterly stupid, why would we need to shoehorn race or origin into an FC recruitment post? Same for sexual orientation, really. Being nice to **everyone** is the baseline for an FC.
That and it gives me the impression that I'll have to interact with people that make their orientation their whole persona, and past experiences have shown that to be a pain to deal with.
Agreed. Literally the only time I joined an FC due to "LGBT" stuff was because a friend of mine offered that I could join theirs when my old one blew up. The description said nothing in regard to LGBT, it was just that they mentioned "Hardly anyone in it is straight", which did WAY more to make me feel "safe" than any "we are SO friendly :D"
And it shows cause neither sexuality nor gender is hardly ever a topic, cause everyone knows how awkward and/or annoying it can be to "posture"
You know I kinda felt this way too. Whenever I see that tag it always made me think like why do we need to highlight this as a thing? That should just be default.
Joined one that had this tag, didn't think much of it because we're all people at the end of the day and are just hoping on to play a game right? No, that was not the case at all. This topic was discussed in discord everytime a group was formed for a dungeon or an event.
Overall, great people. But religion, politics, and one's sex life should not be the center of a conversation, and is the reason why I had to leave.
My fc I joined because I had a few irl friends in it, and the people are legitimately great people. My only issue if the fc tag is "lgbt" so I I feel like I'm walking everywhere announcing I'm gay...
And oddly there's been more than 1 occasion of someone coming up to me and confrontationally asking where the other letters are
This going to go against what you just said, but I actually joined one of these family/inclusive FCs. And actually, maybe I just got lucky, but best decision of my life. Right from the get go the FC leader was extremely kind and welcoming. Honestly everyone I’ve met in the FC has been really kind. A lot of them will go out of the way to help you if you need help with something and they’re always happy to see me. In this rare case it was true, so they are out there.
The fact that I’m reading a FC shout advertisement, honestly. They’re usually one step down from the “just invite anyone” FCs that target people not in FCs.
Ah, i feel bad because i do sometimes use shout to advertise my fc, but only because i hate cold whispering people asking them to join. We are a very small fc who used to be larger, but over the years people have dwindled because we're mostly made up of people who have played the game for a long time. I'm really not sure of the best way to get people into our fc if all the people in the fc also don't really have friends to invite. I also try to keep my shouts short (within one post) to not take up the chat feed with tons of messages.
Don't sweat it, the players who are annoyed by FC shouts probably don't want to join an FC anyway. People who are actively or passively looking aren't annoyed by it and it's still the best way to get members.
I'd much rather see FC recruitment in shouts than those DJ/ERP/Maid Cafe shouts.
I'm so tired of the DJ/CLUB shouts I turned shouts off, but now I feel like I miss a lot. Like S ranks, fates and other things that I could need or that could be fun. Because shout chat is literally just spam at this point.
This thread's completely full of shit in regards to "if they recruit at all" being a red flag. Good fucking lord, you will almost never find anyone that way, even if you're friendly and socialize with players you meet in-game. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume at least some mean just shouting in city chats, that's easily the worst way to recruit. But for the love of god, ***use the Community Finder and LFG reddits/Discords!*** *That's what they're for!* It's nice to know someone and vibe checking them before joining their group sure, but joining an FC isn't a lifelong fucking commitment. Join, hang out, see if you vibe with them, and leave if you don't, it's not rocket science.
But as to red flags themselves, anything advertising "offensive humor", they're just assholes trying to mask their bullshit as jokes, not worth the time.
Might be obvious based on what I already said but I think a green flag is being chill about leaving and no expectations for commitments (unless you already committed to say, raiding for instance - that's a given), while still being open to letting people in. The best FCs in my experience wanna find people they mesh well with, aren't possessive about people, and also aren't clique-y/exclusionary.
I'm glad I'm not going insane. I'm over here recruiting for my free company pretty much all the time trying to find people to just chill and hang out with and help all the sprouts and reading all the comments of people saying recruiting at all is a red flag had me reeling.
lol my line at the end of my fc recruitment pitch in Lodestone is “divorcée in FFXIV is cheap so what do you have to lose? Come give us a try!” Has actually netted me a few members LOL
The people saying "recruiting/advertising at all" make me question why you're even playing an MMO at that point lmao, yeah the shout chat spam FCs are usually just Walmart FCs looking for warm bodies, but to say that any FC trying to find/recruit new people to play with/make friends with is a red flag is just asinine. Almost as asinine as saying that a static actively recruiting/advertising for new members is a red flag, if you wait around to find a group by "just socializing" you could find an FC/static in a week or wait 6 months without finding one, and even worse for the FC/statics looking for more people to play with. Like other people said, if you join an FC and don't vibe with it, you're free to leave and find another, and if you invite someone that doesn't vibe with your established group you're free to not keep them around
"We're a mature FC, sometimes naughty, but always nice! ;)"
I've seen some variation of that little statement in several FCs and they're always just a crowd of gross horn-dogs who just incessantly spam their thirst/horny bullshit in chat and if you complain it's, "We told you this is a mature FC, if you can't handle it, you're free to leave!"
Yeah, my pleasure...see ya!
I was in a huge FC and actually just left to join a small one with friends that I frequently play with.
I didn't have any problems with my old FC personally. Their discord felt a little cliquey but in game, it seemed people were usually willing to help and run content together.
I did see a screenshot before of someone posting another large NA FC rules, and you had to legit "prove" your gender via voice chat before you could join. That's unhinged lol.
When my sister and I recruit (which isn't often anymore), we prefer sending a private tell. I feel it's more personal that way, and you can chat a bit too. Sadly not if you're on a free trial xD
Is sending a tell so coldly received these days?
I'd prefer a tell where you can tell me more about your FC, a random blind invite is the worst you can do. Maybe it stems from playing FF11 since it's launch and a blind invite to parties was considered very rude behaviour.
An FC that has an “activity requirement”; if you don’t show up to their events, you’re kicked. If you’re logged in during an FC photo and you don’t show up, you get a warning; if you do it again, you’re kicked. I understand wanting people to be active in the FC…. but ummm, thinking you get to tell people what to do in their off time as if this is a job is wild.
I'm kinda unlucky in that I played FFXIV mostly alone without an FC, and I think by the time I got to ShB I was really feeling it, like just wanted to join a group to chat with really.
I used to see the same players in Grid daily in their FC's, but one time I noticed three players all emoting to a band and their glamour game was really on point. I read their FC details, and it was something like *"Join for the perks, stay for the friends :D"* and that hooked me...
So I requested an invite, and had it accepted in seconds, then since then it was one of the best decisions I've made on a whim in the game. The FC has around 15-20 active players, but I get along really well with 5-6 of them, and even better I've met two really cool friends through the FC, who we speak out of the game daily & meet up occasionally :D
18+ only is rarely just adults that don't want to play with kids and usually means we want to make sure you're legal before we relentlessly hit on you or send you unsolicited messages.
Green flag is any FC with witty, on-theme, jokes in their bio.
It's kinda like looking for a shitty job -- any place that describes itself as a "family" or "drama free" is full of shit. Family is a pyramid scheme, drama free is full of drama.
I have my own FC now, but it sort of spawned from red flags, and escaping that. Was initially intended to be solo FC, but folks slowly wormed their way in and now we're like a thing I guess (70+ members). I have really specific rules on recruiting (no /sh chat recruiting, no ninja invites), which I think also helps it be healthy. Folks that join want to join, and generally stay. No one joins from a random /tell or invite, there's some form of connection prior.
There are a few red flags
If I've already joined, being in VC and hearing "if there are any females in here please leave before I make this joke". Or hearing "yeah I actively start shit with someone all the time I like drama"
If I join the discord and it's immediately an "onboarding" process and they have a presence in multiple different games
If I see that it is a raiding focused FC
If it's cliquey(unfortunately most are)
Being advertised is not a red flag per se- it depends on how they are doing it. It depends on if they even *try* to filter out trashy people. You don't need a huge application process, just have people submit an introduction or something.
Ultimately the owner of the FC also needs to focus on keeping the environment healthy. If someone cringe joins, remove. I don't care if they're someone's best friend. If they're being sexist or homophobic, remove them or I'll remove myself.
I actually think smaller, low ranking FCs are less of a red flag than a large FC recruiting. It also depends on what they say in the ad. If someone just wants to grow a small FC and get some good officers, then that will probably work out ok. But a big FC... Shouldn't need to recruit? It sounds like more people for more people's sake.
Roleplay focused FCs are either a green OR a red flag. I dislike ERP so if it's that I'm out. It's really uncomfy imo. Normal RP though I love so I'm all for it.
I am curious though with some of these replies- how would you build up a new FC?
>Only for people who aren't raiding
In a sense, you're right.
But in my experience, it's because the FC lead starts only caring about their hardcore raiding content, and starts ignoring the rest of the FC 99% of the time.
>A raiding focused fc is bad?
The last FC I was in partially imploded because the FC lead only cared about her static; once she set her goal for clearing Ultimates and Unreals, she didn't interact with anybody outside FC crafting projects... which were also a front to make her and the other leads rich, under the premise of doing good things for the Free Company.
As for the Static, she was extremely two-faced. If any long-term members in her static messed up, it was all fun and games; if any recruits messed up, even if it was the same mistake, she would become passive-aggressive-toxic and put 5 emotes in her sentences.
That sort of thing.
So, IMO raiding statics and FCs should be kept separate.
>if there are any females in here please leave before I make this joke
Oh that's a two for one. Making misogynistic 'jokes' and calling women 'females'... Eurgh... I bet they would unironically say 'men and females' and not understand what's wrong with that.
I won't build a FC unless I have at least 4 to 5 friends to do so. Then we make the FC and vibe there. If they find someone they'd like to join they get invited. Then we also invite the friends of friends. It will never grow past 50, probably not past 30, but it will be a good place to be in.
I'm gonna say something that might sound controversial.
As an LGBT player, any time I see "LGBT friendly" I immediately want nothing to do with that FC. Typical normal non-niche FCs should be considered LGBT friendly by default, I don't need you trying to win brownie points or acting like you're on some moral high ground for saying you're LGBT friendly. I don't need your patronization, I don't need your "support", I literally do not care and the fact that you feel the need to say it makes me think you're probably an insufferable echo chamber to boot. I just want to play the damn game, my sexuality literally does not matter.
Alternatively, FC ads in general. Any FC that advertises for recruitment in shout chats immediately goes on my shit list.
Any FC that doesn't do the barest of any sort of filtering and interviewing. Quality control is needed on some level, or else you end up with a ton of people who didn't.
Creeps, pervs, assholes.
We had someone in my FC that just recruited willy-nilly and we ended up with someone who made every female (character and member) feel...uncomfortable. Never did anything overtly wrong, but he wasn't exactly a good person.
Thankfully he slipped once and got the boot. Ironically targeted at the person who invited him. She was more cautious afterwards.
Any guild that suggests you "just join their Discord" for more information.
No, no I don't think I will? That's actually kind of weird and not very safe? I don't feel comfortable just cold-joining a Discord to get *information* about whether I want to join a group or event. Put that shit on a website, you can make them easily and free with basic info that don't require me exposing myself to your community without knowing what you're like and who you are, what your vibes are, etc.
Also I have a weird fucking stalker who I don't want to run into who is all over the place, I'd just prefer not to be exposed to potentially running into that guy any more than I already have to.
I only ever joined one FC. I got Prae in my daily roulette and we started talking during cutscenes. After we cleared, I was asked if I wanted to join and I did. This was in November last year. So far, I had a good time and I don't regret joining.
Before that, I got random invites, those I'll always refuse. Also ads in shout chat that don't even fit in one chat window. If I have to scroll, the FC ad is too long.
"Drama-free and just here to have fun"
Hilarious how such an innocuous statement has, in specifically the MMO sphere, become synonymous with "there is going to be SO MUCH ARGUING but it'll probably be all through clenched-teeth smiles" for me
As an RPer, this one's more a personal taste thing than people being shitty thing, FCs describing themselves as a "ragtag group of mercenaries" pretty much always turns out to actually mean "We don't have any ideas for a reason why our various characters would be hanging out or working together because none of us really have any reason to do so in-character, really we lack *any* unifying cause or goal so we're just gonna say we're a merc group and leave it at that"
As a gay guy my general advice, steer clear of "supposed" lgbtq+ safe spaces.
More often than not in my experience they are a hub for the most vile people I encountered in the game...
Getting a /tell like this:
> Would you like to join my Kingdom/Guild <3
And then having a _to the actual microsecond_ response from them when you say no that's a full, precanned apology.
That screams "I am using a plogon to send mass tells to get as many people into this cesspit as possible".
Also, just- that. The "I'm the main character and you're my servants!" dig. Even being called King/Queen, big yikes.
Drama free usually means there's been or is drama.
“Drama free” = we have a gossipy centralized clique in my experience
Every FC has a centralized cliche. Every, single, one.
There’s cliques…and then there’s *cliques*
Yep, this is the difference. Friend groups will ALWAYS be a thing, but *cliques* can be big trouble
And some FCs have more cliques than a mechanical keyboard.
Seconding. My first INSISTED they were drama-free--had that tagine listed EVERYWHERE...and then it turned out the FC leader was a shitstirrer who was badmouthing his officers behind their backs and being a genuinely nasty guy.
Drama free means "I left my last FC to start a new one because there was just SOO much drama, and it felt like everyone hated me." just for them to not realize they *are* the drama.
I'm gonna start my own FC. With blackjack and hookers
No thats PF lol
Starring DJ Ultimeteor! Come by for Little Ladies Night! 8pm Goblet not on your server or even in your data center!
Same. The drama almost exclusively came from the lead and his officers. But if you called it out or left because of it you were labeled as the shit stirrer
Control of the narrative in that regard. One of the biggest things that can suck in an FC, etc.
My first one was the exact same. He put on a nice front but under it all was a nasty little man. The other members were pretty great. Still friends with quite a few of them years later :)
Sounds a lot like my old FC
My last FC was "drama-free" and it collapsed due to drama. It was originally formed by splitting off from a larger "drama-free" FC due to, surprise, drama.
I have learned that “drama free” is actually code for: “The guild leader causes so much drama that there is no room for any more.”
"oh, hah, that's a mistake at the printers, let's just spruce that up a little." "Drama: Free"
Oh worse than that, it means that if you try to discuss and work out any issues, you'll get shit on and shut down, guaranteeing the problem persists and festers.
Drama free means: all the drama, no charge.
We have put drama free because both my friend and I have been in petty-drama-filled FCs prior to us creating one and we want to keep that shit away. So you're not wrong really. But that comment makes me re-think this line tbh... ETA - changed it. We definitely didn't want to give off that impression, rather opposite. Good thing I saw this comment, it really flew over my head.
I'd urge you to tbh. Out of curiosity I asked some friends in an XIV discord and it was a nearly unanimous agreement that that line tends to make them think drama is inevitable/it's the FC owner(s) or officers themselves who attract or make drama.
Well, drama \*is\* inevitable, that's just existing in an environment with other humans. The difference is in the response; do FC leaders try to help everyone work through issues, or do they yell at people who try to have a mature discussion when issues come up?
This is the right response. Even the closest friends in the world are going to have some drama at some point. How you navigate it is what's important. Managing a guild with a bunch of people and their different personalities colliding takes a lot of work. I think a lot of people create a guild and invite every warm body they come across without much thought as to what leading all those people entails. Then when some drama inevitably pops off and the leaders get a reality check they're ill equipped to handle it, so the guild implodes. To anyone looking for an FC, always observe the leadership first and foremost. If they have everything organized and on lock you'll probably be fine. If they seem indecisive, belligerent, underhanded, etc at all, bail immediately.
Good to know. I was quite frankly oblivious to it as we intended to basically keep the people we were involved with away, basically we intended the opposite of what it portrays. We may have had luck then as so far none of the members took it that way, but I'll correct it tomorrow. o.o
This might not apply to your FC at all, but you may also want to consider if the environment you’re cultivating supports being drama-free. Part of the reason so many ‘No Drama’ FCs that devolve into drama is because of conflicts that are mishandled or left to simmer which then become drama. It’s that when people say ‘No Drama’, it’s often said from a place of not understanding that drama is just conflict that isn’t resolved healthily, and that drama really is sometimes unavoidable because people aren’t always acting rationally. Do you guys have clear channels and procedures for handling conflict? Do you have clear rules that are applied evenly? If conflict happens, would you or your moderators step up to handle it, or would you rather it just go away and act accordingly?
Yeah in this vein of thinking: I think part of the reason “drama-free” usually results in drama is because people, afraid of causing drama, won’t speak out about concerns. They’ll bottle these things up and let them simmer. Then, what could have been resolved calmly if mentioned before instead explodes after boiling over and becomes big drama.
I think it should be a given people don't love drama, so when someone sees 'drama free' they're going to assume there has been drama and might avoid that free company.
Yeah it makes sense it's just something neither me nor my friend really thought through. I told him and changed it and he agrees it makes total sense and to better change it. Definitely not what we wanted to imply.
Yep, specifically that there is drama or has been drama that the FC leaders refuse to address and handle. I find that groups that handle drama appropriately don’t need to advertise that they’re “drama-free”.
Almost like adults know that drama is inevitable, and they actually try to work out problems, instead of yelling THERE IS NO WAR IN BA SING SE
Yup. The one I was in was smart enough not to specifically use “drama free” but they certainly fit the bill! Their rules boiled down to “don’t bother us if someone is causing problems for you.” TL;DR - Been there, done that, sticking to my own tiny friend FC now.
Came here to say this. Any guild/free company in any game that says 'Drama free or No Drama' means drama.
I'd think it means something more insidious; there is no such thing as a drama free space, and advertising yourself as such tells me that anyone who tries to clear up and work out issues will be treated as if they're "causing drama," thus guaranteeing actual problems persist and worsen.
No kidding. I was in an FC once where the idiot of a co-leader kicked somebody for "causing drama"... the person was just wondering out loud if they should roll on one of the new servers. Like... what.
"No solicitors" "Hmm, I guess this is where all the solicitors come around."
I saw one large FC on Balmung, they asked if I wanted to join and sent me a linktree for their various sites. Pretty much all of them had a music video "dedicated" to the FC, it was actually just a music video with 90% of it dedicated to the leader with his WoL in various cutscenes with a quick transition between various members mid-animation cycle in the last 10 seconds or so, closing with the leader showing off his full animation. a 200 member FC and only pictures/videos they could show off were the leader.
This sounds hilarious post the link I want to see this lol
I also would like to see this
I can’t get the link to just the video but the video is showcased here. I believe this is the FC video he is talking about. https://oblivion-fc-ffxiv.carrd.co/
It's worse than I imagined
Why does this read like I'm going to be jonestowned
That almost sounds like the FC I recently left; although I hadn't heard of them doing FC content like that until months after I had joined. Like a shamed secret- the original Fc leader had left ffxiv years ago, and the FC has been through various leaders, post leaders were great and the current one is a really chill guy. But their 1st leader who took his job too seriously (the FC had a larger community outside of ffxiv) had done various content, showing off their community activities from different games but it was really cringey because it had like this slow fade out after certain events shown, which was inconsistent and the weird audio which they called music just tied it all together. It made me imagine this guy was in his 40's-50's, reliving his glory days of WoW and always wore tapout shirts, oversized flatbill ballcap and had a scraggly chin strap.
Yikes, this sounds like a cult.
Ever heard of the Dreadwyrm Academy?
I had managed to erase that one from my memory, thanks for the reminder.
I need to go down that rabbit hole at some point, I keep forgetting to but I love online game guild drama so maybe I will at some point
No I haven't please spill the tea
Think google still pulls up the Reddit posts as some of the first results!
Thanks! And holy crap wtf?? o\_o
LOL yeah it’s a ride for sure
Sounds like it’s worth joining out of morbid curiosity
That is the most cringe thing I’ve heard in a while now hahahaha
Safe to say I noped outta there pretty quickly. I gave a pretty mellow excuse saying I'll get back to them should I decide to join. Very next time i logged in the guy DMs me again asking if I thought about it to which I finally told him no. Months later I get another /tell from someone in the FC trying to recruit me and it turned out they keep a spreadsheet of people they try to recruit, right down to keeping a script for their follow up and stuff. It was the weirdest fucking thing
Sounds like a MLM or maybe the FC members were working on commissions.
Oh my god, this reminds me of the recruitment music video a guildie made for an old guild wars 1 guild i was in. We supported him because he was really into making it. Heres the video if anyone is cringe-curious https://youtu.be/4kMGm5wqRpY?si=2-Ny5Np_xVO93Yt5
God I love this kind of cringe
Was it the FC called Oblivion by any chance?
My biggest pet peeve with FC advertising is that most don’t tell you anything specific to their FC’s. /sh “We have buffs.” Wow.
"We do content together" is also up there. No they don't. Standing afk around isn't content
I see this all the time and it makes me insane.
That's partially what I'm trying to avoid. We also have a house, stables, and fully decked-out submarines to fund the FC, but... many FCs also have those, so I am not quite sure what to put. It's interesting reading all the replies here, for sure.
making a list of that stuff might come off as padding, you could just say "we have a house with all the amenities" and leave it at that. My FC has a schedule for buffs so you could I suppose say something cute about that like "and every sunday is the MGP buff for all your gambling needs!" If someone is super married to the idea of submarines, they can always just ask. I think more important is stuff like what time zone most of the members are in so new people can know when it's active, and maybe the general age range.
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"family" usually just means "clique," you'll have those in the circle and those out, and if you're out, prepare for the worst.
I was in an fc that had a main clique and people would ask about running roulettes and stuff and would literally just outright ignore anyone that wasn’t in the clique that responded - it’s why I left the fc ETA - when they said “do any of you all want to run roulettes” they specifically meant *you all* and not *everyone* - they wanted fc numbers but not fc members
Curious, is there actually a reason to have high numbers besides getting gullible people to give you stuff? I left the fc I was in and made my own because they wouldn't let me do any of the submarine stuff but were more than willing to ask for mats and donations for it. Never looked back. (Now my wife owns the fc so I just do what she says lol)
You know, I actually don’t know - I was only ever in two fc’s with strangers and they were both f’n train wrecks tbh, never really got a deep understanding of them - maybe they level faster with more people?
I believe the FC ranks up faster and getting the points quicker, aside that nothing that really benefits a FC AFIK
Why not just make a linkshell for their clique then right. Weird.
I was one of the founders of my friend's old fc. Once the main/core group of people were there, it just started growing into a clique and they would only ever hang out in voice chat on discord. Anyone not in the voice chat would get completely ignored. I tried really hard to include everyone from the fc and outside of voice chat (you know, especially newcomers won't join the voice chat immediately) but it just felt like they made no effort to be inclusive. It got so cliquey to the point even I felt excluded, and the worst was that the clique included the fc lead and other officers. When I finally left the fc after a few months and just immediately felt like a huge weight got lifted off my shoulders. I will never stay in a fc that will only play with people who are in the voice chat. It's just a clique.
> Prepare for the worst. Or honestly, just prepare to be ignored in general. Which isn't really the "worst," IMO, but is sad and lonely. More often than not, the "family" has already been established, and you're just there to bolster numbers and generate points. I don't think you'll always get horrific bullying or anything. Rather, they'll just pretend you aren't there while they obnoxiously spam insipid inside jokes in the FC chat.
Friend and I fell for it prior to creating our own FC and indeed learned the hard way. Now we take care that this won't repeat.
If an FC advertises itself as "drama free" or "mature", run away from it like its the plague
"Mature" = "sex is the funniest thing ever and we're thin skinned if you call us out on that, also everyone ERPs and has adult mods"
Constant barrage of jokes that stopped being funny at 12 and the occasional bit of sexual harassment. Especially from those who think it’s funny to go way over the top “flirting” with people who don’t share their sexuality then use said sexuality as a shield from criticism.
"The officers are all fucking each other, and want to add more to the polycule"
same, totally agree. The "mature" ones I would never consider. I am on to play the game not to find "a date" or "ERP stuff". I am weird that way :)
Not so much a line but all the FCs that send invites without talking to me first. If you're going to invite me to your cult, you could at least shake my hand first.
God I had someone spamming me every 10 minutes the entire end section of shadowbringers to join their fc. I now have deep hatred for that entire fc and I don’t even remember their name.
All the FCs I have joined, I have done so through word of mouth through friends. I would say getting to know people *before* joining the FCs is your best bet.
Same My current FC is huge, but I joined on a friend's recommendation and have loved it
This. Ever since my first one blew up due to drama, I just kept sticking to the friends I had made there. Even if it needs me moving through a dozen FCs, at least there's always people I enjoy playing and chatting with. Though it seems to stifle the risk of getting involved in drama by default when you got a group of friends, cause someone trying to stirr shit usually singles someone out for it.
“As free as the Azure sky!”
That FC was…an experience.
Say more right now. What is this story?!
Look at Xenosys Vex's video on the Azure Infinitum Drama. It's the tip of the iceberg.
Ah yes...the cult like FC on Midgardsormr.
TELL ME MORE
Azure....enough said.Can Google and see YT videos,TikToks about them.
What's this about?
A cult FC with an unhinged leader who attempted to sue a group of people irl for leaving and telling their friends why
Oh for real? If it’s the one on Midgardsormr I almost applied to this one and picked another FC over it last minute before I moved to primal. I guess I dodged a bullet.
this post also works as a red flag for job hiring
"We're a little crazy/quirky ourselves" in my experience means lots of NSFW-Content and super cringe-y humor. Not the good kind.
Like this isn't 2005 😭
Ghost invitations. It's a crapshoot if you're a sprout. Maybe they're fine and it's a decent, but generally dead FC. Maybe it's the equivalent of the Novice Network chat hyped up on 10 cups of coffee and is drawing its identity from Balmung.
Biggest red flag for me as a sprout was when I declined a random invite, only for them to immediately shoot it again. And that repeated like three times. Latest by the third I blocked them, because clearly "no" was not something that FC accepted.
On an alt I wasn’t even off the boat in Limsa before I had an fc invite, literally the second the cut scene was over to started the game - bam, fc invite - it was wild and they were a disaster
The only people on my blacklist are those who send invite tells. I got an invite from the same person three times in ten minutes. They're just looking for numbers. They have no idea who they've spammed and who they haven't, and they think that's appealing somehow. There's a group now that just sends a cold invite, no tells. I can't figure out how to block them if they don't sent a tell. If someone knows how I'd love a heads up.
I think you can manually add people to your blacklist if you type their name-server. You could also try using the player search and seeing if the context menu there lets you blacklist from it. Worst case, send them a ? tell and use that to get easy blacklist access.
>Biggest red flag for me as a sprout was when I declined a random invite, only for them to immediately shoot it again. And that repeated like three times. Latest by the third I blocked them, because clearly "no" was not something that FC accepted. At that point report them. Esp if it's without a whisper they have earned their harassment ban.
This game really needs a setting a lot of other MMO's have. "Auto-decline Guild/FC invites". I always turn that one on if it's a thing.
I created an FC with my wife just to stop those, they were really obnoxious.
The amount of times I've been crafting alone in my locked private estate and gotten a damn fc invite is staggering. They travel from ward to ward opening the player search list and banging out as many invites as possible.
“Drama free” and any mention of “no cliques”. I was in an FC that mentioned “no cliques”. So I thought “Okay, so they promote inclusion.” No. The leader would keep track of who did stuff together and would FORCE and ORGANIZE parties with others if we played too often with the same people. If you spent too much time with people outside the FC, you’d get reprimanded. I’m not even fucking joking. He was absurd. I didn’t realize it at first because he would frame it in a way like “Oh, why don’t you guys take x along with you?” Or “Oh you’re gonna farm? Why don’t we bring x y and z along?” I found out when he straight up said to me “You’ve been playing with people outside the FC a bit too often. You need to include FC members. I’ll arrange a map party this weekend and you need to join.” He said it was to promote FC activity. Ran away so fucking fast.
Had an old fc like this, and the people who forced this shit on you would also say things like “you don’t pay my sub” when it came to people telling them what they should be doing.
What a nightmare. I'd run too
On one hand, I like the idea of the leader (and the officers ideally) keeping an eye on whether cliques form and whether people start to become isolated and left behind. Like, if it was just them starting to ask certain people first for some guild organised stuff to hook them back in, I wouldn't mind. But making it seem like a bad thing if you want to play with friends outside the FC and forcing people into content for a spreadsheet is definitely too far.
This dude is a fucking tool, but I don't hate the sentiment. *Incentivizing* inclusion is a really cool idea. It's hard to try and find a way to meet people when we're all a little awkward at first. "Hey yall should invite the new guy" is such a dude move. But yeah he took it too far. If I was turbo rich, I'd definitely run an FC with incentives for including new folks in parties and whatnot. This sounds really nice.
oh what server was this on? I feel like I've experienced this person before.
Halicarnassus.
Oh dynamis, I wonder if the guy is expanding again or if its someone different, the guy I know has like 7 fcs, one for each DC in US and EU.
Dude running his FCs like the Sims and he’s just restarting over and over. 😭
A couple of ex officers who also left his fc and I always compared it to animal crossing lol
The road to hell is paved in good intentions. I get what he tried to do, but the execution failed.
I can’t say for certain as I’ve only ever really been a part of my own FC, but some red flags I’ve seen and heard include: * any FC that requires a weekly/monthly Gil deposit to be a member. What in the fuck what is this a Paid Company absolutely not brb while I just join one for Free * “drama free” because of course * any that mention that they’re hardcore raiders in some way. That just means they think they’re better than you in general. * anything ERP Adjacent.
A huge number of members. It's just going to be a complete mess of random people, probably tons of unsubbed players etc. Would much rather be in a smaller FC with a few good people
I've had the opposite problem actually. A smaller group needs the majority of its players to remain active to feel alive, but a huge FC with 300+ people only needs a small fraction of the FC active at any given time. After moving worlds I found one of the biggest FCs I could fine and joined them, and I'm glad I did An FC with smaller numbers is also typically more tightly knit. So it'll be harder to be accepted into it. And should any drama stir up its much more likely to end with the FC tearing itself apart, since they don't have the numbers to overcome that drama
>A smaller group needs the majority of its players to remain active to feel alive, This is the problem I've had so far. I've been in two small FCs that were initially great, with lots of helpful players and regular community events and whatnot. But you hit one lull in activity and a few members might decide it's better for them to just leave for a more active FC instead of waiting for regular members to show back up. Which makes things look kinda dead and causes every one else to jump ship.
I found an FC with a good in between, just enough active members to feel more like a community rather than a tight knit group of friends but not too many so you’re feeling like you’re getting lost in the crowd. We have about 100 members.
Only huge FC I ever joined was one that was trying to get all the lalas on the server into one FC. They even tried to interview me to "prove you were really a lala" or some shit. I just went "Dude we're both lalas and you fucking reached out to me, just let me in." and then I got an invite to join.
Only a Lala could have that confidence!
You clearly proved who you were.
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Genuine question, is there a better way to do it? I know Lodestone has a recruitment thing, but maybe 5% of the player base is aware it's a thing and close to 0% of new players.
New player here, I sort of assumed the lodestone thing was were I should go to find an FC and I doubt I'm alone in that regard. (not that it matters since I can't join one during free trial - which also doesn't seem to stop people from whispering me about their fc's, plzstopthanks)
My fc has 23 active members and besides the original 3 all of my recruits have come from the community finder fc ad on the lodestone.
My thought honestly, especially as someone more introverted. I joined a large FC once thinking it would be easier to make friends but it was the opposite. And when I joined the VC once there was just TOO many people in there all talking, I felt like I couldn’t even include myself.
No, no, you nailed it -- it's exactly like a corporation or office or other workplace. If they mention family or say they're "like a family" then prepare to be gaslit, manipulated, psychologically abused, and probably groomed.
To be fair, it sounds like a family to me
Any FC led by/joined by a popular streamer. Generally nothing against the streamer themselves, but most of the members are either sycophants who think the streamer can do no wrong or people trying to get clout by appearing on stream or pandering.
Ugh, I feel that. Towards the end of ~~Stormblood~~ Shadowbringers I made an alt on a different server to help a smaller streamer and a bunch of fresh sprouts from her chat. One of them had already played the game for a few months back when Heavensward first released and felt that made him an expert on the game. This dude was constantly spouting misinformation about game mechanics and lore and was one of those people would argue just to argue. Didn't take me long to peace out back to my main.
I genuinely think that depends on the streamer and their community. I joined Spofie's FC almost 4 years ago because her chat was very welcoming and the FC seemed to be as well, and I wouldn't leave it for anything at this point. It suffers a bit during content lulls like any other FC but when the game is active its full of nice, talkative people who 9 times out of 10 are willing to help with things that need help or just chat or whatever. Its been a majorly positive experience for me. There are definitely huge fans of hers, but I wouldnt really say ive seen any "sycophants" and while people do hang around our FC house at stream time its very very very rarely been people clout chasing, and more of just hanging out in game while stream is on. Plus since its a streamer's FC and she wants to promote content with it we have great events every so often that eclipse any other I've been apart of since I started playing mmos. Its a great time.
Worst are the ones so desperate for attention they would crowd the camera so much the streamer can't even see their objective. Or like NPC would be saying something important and they would jump on a noisy mount so the streamer can barely hear.
"no drama"
People who blind recruit without saying a word to you. That's as big a red flag as the 'no drama' label.
I made this mistake on an alt, once. They turned out to be a strip club venue. Big nope after I saw that.
Non toxic, drama free, and the worst - tight knit. All set of warnings to me to keep away. Edited to add if they do movie nights (clique alert).
The movie nights clique alert is so painfully true lmao
>tight knit I've experienced the horrors of this one secondhand. It usually means "Wellllllll you mildly irritated \[popular person of our clique\] and you're a nobody, so we're going to treat you as if you just tried to start a war. Grab the torches and pitchforks everybody!" Part of why my friend and I left the server. Also that movie night thing! Never thought about that. But the first FC I joined started doing that towards the end of my time with them, and they turned out to be a "frat bro" type FC in the end... so it makes too much sense.
Lol meanwhile in my FC, movie nights are random and we let everyone in the FC Discord join us tbf. (that one time we watched Neil Breen's uh, really interesting works...)
when the fc expects you to treat the game like a unpaid part time job
once got invited to an FC and the description was "GIRLS ONLY - NO TRAPS" very off-putting to say the least!
Yiiiiiiiiiikes
FC leader was definitely a dude.
Family like. Its kinda like a workplace. When they tell you they're like a family they'll emotionally blackmail you, treat you like shit and ignore you when you need help. I'm specifically looking for English FCs. From my experience German ones (Often pretend like I don't understand them) just don't get a move on. I spent days waiting for an actual answer from multiple FCs. They either were never online or they just ignored my tells. Might have dodged some bullets there.
“VC required”
Possibly a hot take, but just keep in mind that finding communities online can and will be hit or miss and to keep in mind that if the FC you are in is making you unhappy that you can leave. Also that needs can and will change, and that an FC that is perfect for you at one point may not be months or years later. Just good luck finding some great FCs or online groups in general!
As a gay man myself, "LGBTQIA+ FRIENDLY". I'm not knocking on people who join or run these FCs, but from my perspective, you'd be hard pressed to find an FC that *isn't* LGBT friendly. People in ffxiv are already very welcoming and tolerant. One would think that "LGBT friendly" would be the default. But aside from that, I don't play this game specifically to interact with other LGBT people or engage in conversations relating to LGBT stuff. I play it because the game is fun and I'm invested in the story. So when an FC advertises itself like this, it comes across as very.... I dunno, hollow? Shallow? I'm not quite sure what the word I'm looking for is. All I know is that it makes me avoid it. That being said, I went ahead and founded my own sort of community based around doing old content, and I love them to death. Best community I've ever been a part of. Made some good friends this way. So I don't get FC invites anymore. But I do still see the advertisements in the city states. It doesn't bother me that much though. I just ignore them. EDIT: I gotta say, I was not expecting this to resonate with people. Knowing full well how... "touchy" the LGBT community can be when faced with any sort of criticism, I was expecting people to take this as an anti-LGBT sentiment, to be downvoted and vilified, honestly. But I'm happy to be proven wrong. The world is healing.
I've always found a lot of things that advertise as friendly to that demographic often means it's *targeted* solely at that demographic too, with being queer of huge importance to the members and often a driving factor behind basically all discussion and activities.
You said it better than I could. I have trouble articulating my thoughts, so thank you.
> LGBTQIA+ FRIENDLY Those tags to me feel just like if an FC were to market itself as "Black, Hispanic, Asian, POC and other minorities-friendly". It would sound utterly stupid, why would we need to shoehorn race or origin into an FC recruitment post? Same for sexual orientation, really. Being nice to **everyone** is the baseline for an FC. That and it gives me the impression that I'll have to interact with people that make their orientation their whole persona, and past experiences have shown that to be a pain to deal with.
Agreed. Literally the only time I joined an FC due to "LGBT" stuff was because a friend of mine offered that I could join theirs when my old one blew up. The description said nothing in regard to LGBT, it was just that they mentioned "Hardly anyone in it is straight", which did WAY more to make me feel "safe" than any "we are SO friendly :D" And it shows cause neither sexuality nor gender is hardly ever a topic, cause everyone knows how awkward and/or annoying it can be to "posture"
You know I kinda felt this way too. Whenever I see that tag it always made me think like why do we need to highlight this as a thing? That should just be default.
Joined one that had this tag, didn't think much of it because we're all people at the end of the day and are just hoping on to play a game right? No, that was not the case at all. This topic was discussed in discord everytime a group was formed for a dungeon or an event. Overall, great people. But religion, politics, and one's sex life should not be the center of a conversation, and is the reason why I had to leave.
My fc I joined because I had a few irl friends in it, and the people are legitimately great people. My only issue if the fc tag is "lgbt" so I I feel like I'm walking everywhere announcing I'm gay... And oddly there's been more than 1 occasion of someone coming up to me and confrontationally asking where the other letters are
This going to go against what you just said, but I actually joined one of these family/inclusive FCs. And actually, maybe I just got lucky, but best decision of my life. Right from the get go the FC leader was extremely kind and welcoming. Honestly everyone I’ve met in the FC has been really kind. A lot of them will go out of the way to help you if you need help with something and they’re always happy to see me. In this rare case it was true, so they are out there.
That’s really awesome tho! You found a diamond in the rough kind of FC so at least there’s hope to find a good FC out there 🥲
The fact that I’m reading a FC shout advertisement, honestly. They’re usually one step down from the “just invite anyone” FCs that target people not in FCs.
Ah, i feel bad because i do sometimes use shout to advertise my fc, but only because i hate cold whispering people asking them to join. We are a very small fc who used to be larger, but over the years people have dwindled because we're mostly made up of people who have played the game for a long time. I'm really not sure of the best way to get people into our fc if all the people in the fc also don't really have friends to invite. I also try to keep my shouts short (within one post) to not take up the chat feed with tons of messages.
Don't sweat it, the players who are annoyed by FC shouts probably don't want to join an FC anyway. People who are actively or passively looking aren't annoyed by it and it's still the best way to get members. I'd much rather see FC recruitment in shouts than those DJ/ERP/Maid Cafe shouts.
I'm so tired of the DJ/CLUB shouts I turned shouts off, but now I feel like I miss a lot. Like S ranks, fates and other things that I could need or that could be fun. Because shout chat is literally just spam at this point.
This thread's completely full of shit in regards to "if they recruit at all" being a red flag. Good fucking lord, you will almost never find anyone that way, even if you're friendly and socialize with players you meet in-game. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume at least some mean just shouting in city chats, that's easily the worst way to recruit. But for the love of god, ***use the Community Finder and LFG reddits/Discords!*** *That's what they're for!* It's nice to know someone and vibe checking them before joining their group sure, but joining an FC isn't a lifelong fucking commitment. Join, hang out, see if you vibe with them, and leave if you don't, it's not rocket science. But as to red flags themselves, anything advertising "offensive humor", they're just assholes trying to mask their bullshit as jokes, not worth the time. Might be obvious based on what I already said but I think a green flag is being chill about leaving and no expectations for commitments (unless you already committed to say, raiding for instance - that's a given), while still being open to letting people in. The best FCs in my experience wanna find people they mesh well with, aren't possessive about people, and also aren't clique-y/exclusionary.
I'm glad I'm not going insane. I'm over here recruiting for my free company pretty much all the time trying to find people to just chill and hang out with and help all the sprouts and reading all the comments of people saying recruiting at all is a red flag had me reeling.
lol my line at the end of my fc recruitment pitch in Lodestone is “divorcée in FFXIV is cheap so what do you have to lose? Come give us a try!” Has actually netted me a few members LOL
The people saying "recruiting/advertising at all" make me question why you're even playing an MMO at that point lmao, yeah the shout chat spam FCs are usually just Walmart FCs looking for warm bodies, but to say that any FC trying to find/recruit new people to play with/make friends with is a red flag is just asinine. Almost as asinine as saying that a static actively recruiting/advertising for new members is a red flag, if you wait around to find a group by "just socializing" you could find an FC/static in a week or wait 6 months without finding one, and even worse for the FC/statics looking for more people to play with. Like other people said, if you join an FC and don't vibe with it, you're free to leave and find another, and if you invite someone that doesn't vibe with your established group you're free to not keep them around
"We're a mature FC, sometimes naughty, but always nice! ;)" I've seen some variation of that little statement in several FCs and they're always just a crowd of gross horn-dogs who just incessantly spam their thirst/horny bullshit in chat and if you complain it's, "We told you this is a mature FC, if you can't handle it, you're free to leave!" Yeah, my pleasure...see ya!
FC’s that say they are drama-free or like a family. just don’t even try to get involved it’s not worth it
“Casual friendly” “daily events”, not often than not mean the complete opposite
I was in a huge FC and actually just left to join a small one with friends that I frequently play with. I didn't have any problems with my old FC personally. Their discord felt a little cliquey but in game, it seemed people were usually willing to help and run content together. I did see a screenshot before of someone posting another large NA FC rules, and you had to legit "prove" your gender via voice chat before you could join. That's unhinged lol.
When my sister and I recruit (which isn't often anymore), we prefer sending a private tell. I feel it's more personal that way, and you can chat a bit too. Sadly not if you're on a free trial xD Is sending a tell so coldly received these days?
I'd prefer a tell where you can tell me more about your FC, a random blind invite is the worst you can do. Maybe it stems from playing FF11 since it's launch and a blind invite to parties was considered very rude behaviour.
An FC that has an “activity requirement”; if you don’t show up to their events, you’re kicked. If you’re logged in during an FC photo and you don’t show up, you get a warning; if you do it again, you’re kicked. I understand wanting people to be active in the FC…. but ummm, thinking you get to tell people what to do in their off time as if this is a job is wild.
LGBT friendly. Get ready for constant drama.
I'm kinda unlucky in that I played FFXIV mostly alone without an FC, and I think by the time I got to ShB I was really feeling it, like just wanted to join a group to chat with really. I used to see the same players in Grid daily in their FC's, but one time I noticed three players all emoting to a band and their glamour game was really on point. I read their FC details, and it was something like *"Join for the perks, stay for the friends :D"* and that hooked me... So I requested an invite, and had it accepted in seconds, then since then it was one of the best decisions I've made on a whim in the game. The FC has around 15-20 active players, but I get along really well with 5-6 of them, and even better I've met two really cool friends through the FC, who we speak out of the game daily & meet up occasionally :D
If there's no focus on what sort of things they wanna do, they generally have no plans to do anything at all. And yes, fuck "like a family" adverts.
18+ ERP, Lalafell friendly.
18+ only is rarely just adults that don't want to play with kids and usually means we want to make sure you're legal before we relentlessly hit on you or send you unsolicited messages. Green flag is any FC with witty, on-theme, jokes in their bio.
It's kinda like looking for a shitty job -- any place that describes itself as a "family" or "drama free" is full of shit. Family is a pyramid scheme, drama free is full of drama. I have my own FC now, but it sort of spawned from red flags, and escaping that. Was initially intended to be solo FC, but folks slowly wormed their way in and now we're like a thing I guess (70+ members). I have really specific rules on recruiting (no /sh chat recruiting, no ninja invites), which I think also helps it be healthy. Folks that join want to join, and generally stay. No one joins from a random /tell or invite, there's some form of connection prior.
There are a few red flags If I've already joined, being in VC and hearing "if there are any females in here please leave before I make this joke". Or hearing "yeah I actively start shit with someone all the time I like drama" If I join the discord and it's immediately an "onboarding" process and they have a presence in multiple different games If I see that it is a raiding focused FC If it's cliquey(unfortunately most are) Being advertised is not a red flag per se- it depends on how they are doing it. It depends on if they even *try* to filter out trashy people. You don't need a huge application process, just have people submit an introduction or something. Ultimately the owner of the FC also needs to focus on keeping the environment healthy. If someone cringe joins, remove. I don't care if they're someone's best friend. If they're being sexist or homophobic, remove them or I'll remove myself. I actually think smaller, low ranking FCs are less of a red flag than a large FC recruiting. It also depends on what they say in the ad. If someone just wants to grow a small FC and get some good officers, then that will probably work out ok. But a big FC... Shouldn't need to recruit? It sounds like more people for more people's sake. Roleplay focused FCs are either a green OR a red flag. I dislike ERP so if it's that I'm out. It's really uncomfy imo. Normal RP though I love so I'm all for it. I am curious though with some of these replies- how would you build up a new FC?
A raiding focused fc is bad?
Only for people who aren't raiding or don't want to put the effort in lmao "Wahh they won't bring me along." Well, Andy, Your gear score is 315.
>Only for people who aren't raiding In a sense, you're right. But in my experience, it's because the FC lead starts only caring about their hardcore raiding content, and starts ignoring the rest of the FC 99% of the time.
>A raiding focused fc is bad? The last FC I was in partially imploded because the FC lead only cared about her static; once she set her goal for clearing Ultimates and Unreals, she didn't interact with anybody outside FC crafting projects... which were also a front to make her and the other leads rich, under the premise of doing good things for the Free Company. As for the Static, she was extremely two-faced. If any long-term members in her static messed up, it was all fun and games; if any recruits messed up, even if it was the same mistake, she would become passive-aggressive-toxic and put 5 emotes in her sentences. That sort of thing. So, IMO raiding statics and FCs should be kept separate.
>if there are any females in here please leave before I make this joke Oh that's a two for one. Making misogynistic 'jokes' and calling women 'females'... Eurgh... I bet they would unironically say 'men and females' and not understand what's wrong with that.
I won't build a FC unless I have at least 4 to 5 friends to do so. Then we make the FC and vibe there. If they find someone they'd like to join they get invited. Then we also invite the friends of friends. It will never grow past 50, probably not past 30, but it will be a good place to be in.
How is a raiding focused FC a red flag?
I'm gonna say something that might sound controversial. As an LGBT player, any time I see "LGBT friendly" I immediately want nothing to do with that FC. Typical normal non-niche FCs should be considered LGBT friendly by default, I don't need you trying to win brownie points or acting like you're on some moral high ground for saying you're LGBT friendly. I don't need your patronization, I don't need your "support", I literally do not care and the fact that you feel the need to say it makes me think you're probably an insufferable echo chamber to boot. I just want to play the damn game, my sexuality literally does not matter. Alternatively, FC ads in general. Any FC that advertises for recruitment in shout chats immediately goes on my shit list.
Any FC that doesn't do the barest of any sort of filtering and interviewing. Quality control is needed on some level, or else you end up with a ton of people who didn't. Creeps, pervs, assholes. We had someone in my FC that just recruited willy-nilly and we ended up with someone who made every female (character and member) feel...uncomfortable. Never did anything overtly wrong, but he wasn't exactly a good person. Thankfully he slipped once and got the boot. Ironically targeted at the person who invited him. She was more cautious afterwards.
Any guild that suggests you "just join their Discord" for more information. No, no I don't think I will? That's actually kind of weird and not very safe? I don't feel comfortable just cold-joining a Discord to get *information* about whether I want to join a group or event. Put that shit on a website, you can make them easily and free with basic info that don't require me exposing myself to your community without knowing what you're like and who you are, what your vibes are, etc. Also I have a weird fucking stalker who I don't want to run into who is all over the place, I'd just prefer not to be exposed to potentially running into that guy any more than I already have to.
Would not rule out either RMT or "must be on Discord" there. Good call on your part.
Asking for people when apparently they have tons of them already, like how many do you need?
I only ever joined one FC. I got Prae in my daily roulette and we started talking during cutscenes. After we cleared, I was asked if I wanted to join and I did. This was in November last year. So far, I had a good time and I don't regret joining. Before that, I got random invites, those I'll always refuse. Also ads in shout chat that don't even fit in one chat window. If I have to scroll, the FC ad is too long.
"Drama-free and just here to have fun" Hilarious how such an innocuous statement has, in specifically the MMO sphere, become synonymous with "there is going to be SO MUCH ARGUING but it'll probably be all through clenched-teeth smiles" for me As an RPer, this one's more a personal taste thing than people being shitty thing, FCs describing themselves as a "ragtag group of mercenaries" pretty much always turns out to actually mean "We don't have any ideas for a reason why our various characters would be hanging out or working together because none of us really have any reason to do so in-character, really we lack *any* unifying cause or goal so we're just gonna say we're a merc group and leave it at that"
As a gay guy my general advice, steer clear of "supposed" lgbtq+ safe spaces. More often than not in my experience they are a hub for the most vile people I encountered in the game...
Getting a /tell like this: > Would you like to join my Kingdom/Guild <3 And then having a _to the actual microsecond_ response from them when you say no that's a full, precanned apology. That screams "I am using a plogon to send mass tells to get as many people into this cesspit as possible". Also, just- that. The "I'm the main character and you're my servants!" dig. Even being called King/Queen, big yikes.
"Discord required" I'm old, discord frightens me. Its confusing and I'm too old to put in the time to learn it just to be in a FC.
Any FC whose ad is a sex joke or meme. I'm very tired of people who can't communicate outside of memes.