Advice to people who have FC invite permissionFollow

I've never understood people who send blind invites for anything. Perhaps that's because I'm scarred from mining in XI, when RMT would try to invite players to their parties so they could D2 them away.

Never understood this either. When i'm on a new character or way back before i had my current FC, i'd run around and get spam invited by whoever noticed me running or found me in a /search...

Here's the thing. Why would you want to join a Free Company that enforces this tactic and thus clearly doesnt care about you or what kind of members they invite. That Shinra group on my server used to do this, they ended up with 200+ people from it, and i've not heard of anyone being happy in there except for the handful of core members and the leaders. People leave constantly because no one helps them, they get ignored or simply because inviting all the trash off the streets doesnt exactly help make things better. And following that no one seems to want them in their FC's anymore since they were tarnished from hanging out with those people who recruited anyone from actual friendly adventurers to face-smash-keyboard people we saw warping/hacking around the mining points in the first weeks.

Yet people still throw around blind invites for just about any FC you can imagine, then cry foul and curse when one of the newly invited people runs off with the guild bank or starts being a **** in the chat.

I like the new application system, and i feel it should entirely replace the current invite system. Make invites impossible and people only allowed to join by applying to a Free Company out of their free will instead.

Well, World of Warcraft has that, but all that changed was that people not only spam-invite them (just incase it works or they hadnt turned it off yet), but to also send a completely impersonal macro'd /tell along with it demanding that they join. It wouldnt exactly call that progress since it just doubles the anoyance.

Having a core group of 20 members that are active, helpful and that you can get to know is so much better than an impersonal 200+ Free Company anyhow.

Especially in XIV everything is already so impersonal. Dungeon groups rarely talk, only if someone messes up to cuss at them. Why would you want an impersonal Free Company as well? You know you're just going to get used.

Funny story about that actually, a FC on my server did just that. Invited a crapload of people, just about anyone, had them around for a month or two, then "demanded" contributions from all those people so they could buy a house. And as soon as everyone put money in, they... culled the herd, so to speak, and removed over 80% of their members that the leadership didnt approve of or that the core group didnt want to have around. I remember seeing the shouts from someone who handed over something like 700k only to be kicked the day after.

Does blisting the person work?

Start a FC. Surely there are two others out there that don't want to be in a FC too.
Call it "Leave Me Alone."
Set the FC tag to appear after your names as "GoAway."
Any time you hear a shout from someone complaining that they don't want to be in a FC and to please stop spamming invites, send the tell and offer them a spot in your non-FC group.
No actions, no chat. People can drop any time they want to join a "real" FC.

25K is a reasonable price for peace of mind, no?

Edited, Mar 25th 2014 4:59pm by Catwho

I don't look at someone without a FC and think they have autonomy or independence.

I look at them and feel bad for them because I think they don't have any friends.

I wrote that on my (tragically short) break, or I would have said this earlier, but I meant in the tone of 'on one's own merits.' People can and do get judged on their FC, for better or worse. I've had people say things like 'if you join us, people will know you're not bad.' It might be true, but they'd think I'm a jerk instead. I don't want to be carried or dragged down by a tag, and I have shells and friends to fill that socializing middle ground. There are some nuances I can't articulate, but it boils down to wanting to build my niche without FC influences. I know not everybody cares about reputation, and this is in truth only a small part of why I personally have no Company, but it's a nag that's still there.

I don't have a FC (was part of one up until a month ago when it disbanded). I find they can just get too big and half the people I don't seem to recognize, so the same few people always gather together to get things accomplished. I'm sure some other FC's are better at spreading the wealth, but cliques form whether people want them to or not.

So I've stuck it out with a couple small LS' and we've managed to do more for more people. For some reason in the LS' everyone knows each other quite well and help gets provided for everyone. Oddly enough, these people I play with are all in different companies, yet they seem to do nothing with their FC's. I see what SE was going for with what they have, but it doesn't seem like it's worked out 100%.