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Chakha Malqir · **12-14-2013, 11:10 PM**

Hey folks.

As you've probably heard, the housing costs are a little bit pricey (Balmung is especially feeling the pain at a whopping 20 million gil just for the smallest house!).

Many of you are angry, and rightly so. And many of you are petitioning Square-Enix to drop the prices. But I have a different strategy to tackle this.

This time tomorrow, I will be starting a new Free Company, called "The Hydaelyn Alliance" (Working Title). It will be an OOC Free Company meant to gather all of the roleplayers on Balmung together under a single roof. There are many benefits and purposes to this.

First, with enough members, we will certainly get our housing even without the prices dropping. I have absolutely no doubt about that. And this housing will be used as a central meeting place for all roleplayers on the server. A tavern, a meeting hall, an opera house, whatever you like. It will be all-purpose. Those Free Companies who would much rather have their own customizable base, they are free to do so. But this is for those Free Companies that either utilize other areas as their personal bases anyway, or for those Free Companies that do not have any bases whatsoever.

Second, with all of the roleplayers being a part of the Alliance, they will all get to vote on and share the benefits of Free Company buffs, which will be voted on as needed, with the previously voted on buff being temporarily taken out of the voting for the following buff. (Example: the Combat XP buff is in effect. For the voting for the next buff, the Combat XP buff will not be eligible to be voted on, but it will regain eligibility during the following vote).

Third, because all of the roleplayers that will be a part of the alliance, it will be easy to spot fellow roleplayers out in the field and even communicate with in the Free Company Chat, which will be 100% out-of-character (linkshells, events, and other meet-ups will be relied upon for in-character chat).

Fourth, because we will have our own community of roleplayers, we can help each other out like a real Free Company. Do you often find that you want to work on certain content and most of your Free Company is either offline, busy with their own stuff, or RPing? Perhaps you want to help someone else out with their content? Or perhaps you're working on a Disciple of Hand skill and you want sell your crafting services to other people in proper RP fashion? Or perhaps you want to commission such items from a Disciple of Hand roleplayer? All of these things will be much easier with a Free Company uniting everyone together!

Finally, and I cannot stress this enough, as we go further and further down this road in the game, more and more content is going to get added. A LOT more content. Maybe content that's just as big as this housing thing, or maybe even larger! Don't you want to experience that content first, even though you're a roleplayer and you don't grind stuff out for hours upon hours every single day? Just one of the many other benefits of having every roleplayer under one roof!

Now one of the biggest concerns that I have heard about this idea is that many Free Companies have their own themes. Now this free company, as I have said, will encourage the use of Linkshells for RP purposes. I see absolutely no rhyme or reason why you could not keep your themes and values. This whole free company idea is meant not as a way of forcing everyone to conform to my vision of what an RP is supposed to be, that's not fair of me to do. What this free company is meant to do is join us all together in an out-of-character sense so that our in-character lives can be much more fruitful.

Being a part of this Free Company should mean absolutely nothing to your character in-character. I just want everyone to reap the benefits of those free companies that do grind for hours and hours, have hundreds of members, and can afford stuff like housing without even batting an eyelash.

And honestly, I want this for the community. And if I don't do something like this, who will? And I promise you. Even though I'll technically be the "leader" of this free company, all that means, to me, is that I will be the one managing all of the technical details. Things like looking at polls and votes to properly change the Free Company's buff to the highest voted one (whether I like the one voted in or not), setting up important notices about a particular group or individual's events, etc. I have zero interest in a proper leadership role and I do legitimately having any kind of power over others. I'm just a regular guy, like the rest of you, and I intend to keep being that regular guy. I don't want to abuse my power (in fact, I'll neglect my power as much as my duties allow me to do so). I just want this to be a great community in the game for roleplayers to enjoy all of the out-of-character aspects of the game without having to feel like they're lagging behind everyone else. That's all.

I hope I've made my case for this, and I appreciate you reading all of this. I just want to help. That's all. Feel free to agree with it, disagree with it, critique the idea constructively, suggest a better name, etc.

This is all a work in progress, and I just hope people can see where I'm coming from with this idea.

LiadansWhisper · **12-15-2013, 06:59 AM**

This sounds really interesting, and please don't take this the wrong way, but...I really like the Free Company I'm a part of already. Â :-\

Brave · **12-15-2013, 07:30 AM**

(12-15-2013, 06:59 AM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: This sounds really interesting, and please don't take this the wrong way, but...I really like the Free Company I'm a part of already. Â :-\

I second this post...
And its totally unbiased and has nothing to do with being a part of the same free company >.>

Seriously though, this is a nice gesture but part of this community's strength (and frustration at times ><) is the diversity (and separation) of each group. Putting us under one roof would be pretty crazy too.

Rinh Hallani · **12-15-2013, 07:50 AM**

Yeah. Although I appreciate the intent behind it, I think it might get very tricky trying to manage it down the road. People wanting to use the house for events at the same day and time, for example. :/

Chakha Malqir · **12-15-2013, 10:15 AM**

If you want to stick with your own Free Company, that's fine. I'm not here to force anyone to do anything, merely stating my case.

The thing I've noticed is that, while every FC is, IC, extremely diverse, when it comes to OOC stuff, every single FC usually falls under the same goals and the same ideals as every other FC. A friendly, welcoming free company that is newbie-friendly and is willing to help others out. Why not flip the current structuring upside-down? Right now, I have two or three different RP OOC chats I participate in frequently, one of which belongs to my old free company, which is only there because no one is really allowed to use the FC chat for anything due to excluding others in the channel.

Why can't we have organizations use linkshells for RP purposes and Free Companies for OOC purposes? Why does it have to be separated? I mean heck, for that reason, why are we all members of this forum when we could be off on our own free company forums elsewhere?

As for the events, that's pretty simple. Essentially, there'd be scheduling involved. Group A wants the house to host their Gala on Day X at Time X, and Group B wants to treat the house like a bazaar/marketplace on Day X at Time X. Whichever group puts it into the schedule first, they'll have that event at the time of their choosing. The further in advance, the better. Then the other group will be required to find another date and/or time unless they can negotiate a compromise amongst themselves.

It'd be the same as hosting two events on the same date at the same time in the same place. Negotiations would happen between the two parties and a compromise would be reached. Heck, we can even separate things between Indoor events and Outdoor events to enable two different venues.

But like I've said before. This FC will be for folks like myself who want to reach all of the latest content first, but who also want to have an RP focus. The unfortunate thing I've noticed is that, despite being in the same FC in-character, a lot of those characters can be completely left out of the OOC operations. Heck. I don't remember ever running anything with a single member of my last Free Company. I always ran with people from other Free Companies through the RP OOC chat or with people through the Duty Finder.

I want housing so bad. I want to be in an actual, established community in-game where folks can enjoy that content even when the prices are ridiculously expensive. I don't want any players to feel left out if they miss RP events or they can't seem to make any friends in their RP groups at all.

If you want to stay in your own FCs, that's fine. I still plan on going ahead with this, though, because I really, really want this and I think it will be good for the community.

No Longer Exists · **12-17-2013, 10:40 AM**

I support you 100%, my friend, in your endeavor. My friends and I have recently decided to start our own FC so that will be coming soon to this lovely community and I think you have the right idea. We've tried to band the scattered companies and RPers together before, mostly by linkshell, and I feel that many people get lost in the cracks of such monolithic endeavors.Â

Still, you're on to something and I want to see it succeed. I know -I- would be happy to propose an alliance of sorts, discussing with my friends the concept of advertising our own FC in game and also your FC as an option. Mutually, the community benefits, while we retain our personal preferences. Call it a semi-professional courtesy.Â Cool

I wish you luck and success! Let us know here in this thread when you're up and running, we'll do the same. Cheers!

-Black Hat

Lupo · **12-17-2013, 05:58 PM**

I wish you the best of luck on this idea, however I'd like to make a quick warning that was expressed earlier. People can only be part of one FC and many RPers are already in the FC they want to be in. I think you'll be hard-pressed to get them to QUIT their FC and move to yours just for OOC Chat. These are very close and tight knit groups, who want to have their own house, and their own plots, etc etc. I think there is more to it than common interest and similar goals. I think its like a social unit, much like high school kids have their own circle of friends, and while they may carry the same interest as another group of friends, they may not want to have the two group of friends join forces so to speak. Its a terrible example, but I hope it gets my point across.

Maybe instead of an FC start a linkshell? I think many more people would be on board for that, because it allows OOC chat with other people and is not binding - since you can have up to 8 linkshells?

Maybe I'm just being obtuse.

Tyriont · **12-17-2013, 06:21 PM**

There already is an OOC ls in place which many RPC members use - Intermission, which is linked in the ls section.

As for why not use Free Companies for OOC and linkshells for IC...well, a lot of us already do that. You appear to be assuming that most of us are in IC Free Companies - from personal experience, that's often not the case. And while I understand wanting to band a lot of people together to afford housing, I have one major, overriding issue with that.

It's faceless.

Let's say you have a FC with 100 members, all of them contributing to get the house bought. That's 100 different opinions as to how it should be designed. With as huge a gil investment as we're talking (from an individual contribution standpoint), I personally would want to get to have some say in how the damned thing looks. I don't feel as if I'd have that with a huge FC. At that point, it's just another building in the game to me. From my own observations, the larger a guild/FC/whateveryouwanttocallit gets, the less of a distinct identity it has.

I wish you the best of luck, but I caution you that you will likely end up with a small group at best...which really, doesn't help the issue at hand at all.

Chakha Malqir · **12-22-2013, 12:02 AM**

Eh. Considering I'm the only one who even has the faintest amount of interest in the idea, I'm not gonna bother going through with it. Not worth it.

"The Hydaelyn Alliance" - A Free Company Idea

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes