Our FC History

[Admin]

Our FC story is not the typical “We are a group of tight-knot players who have been playing together since 10+ years ago”. No. We are not.
In fact, this FC went through a lot to become what we are today.

I am going to tell you our story from a first person point of view, as the third leader of this FC.
It could be biased, so please read with a grain of salt.

The founder created this FC with a co-founder he recruited from Reddit.
I was invited to this FC on my first day in this game in early January, when I just found my way out of the town, at lv. 1, trying to figure out how to engage a ladybug in a battle.
I received an invitation from a FC member, who happened to be at the gate.
At that time, I had no idea what a FC is.
The founder and co-leader were hardly online at beginning, so we only had around 2 or 3 members online at peak time.

After the leader was lucky enough to get a small house at the beach front in Mists in early 2016, we got few more members, and started to do more things together, such as daily dungeons, main story clearing, and such.
People are nice to each other. We actually had some fun together.
Until, one day, the leader decided to try extreme primals and coils.

He set a time and told people to show up.
When we were first invited to this FC, we were told that it is a casual FC. All the members also made it clear that due to busy life schedule, we could not commit to a set schedule for a game.
People tried to be there, albeit 1 hour late.
We still had our coil clear, but the leader was pissed.

After the fight, the leader set up coil again for the next week.
But this time, only 3 people showed up.
No one actually promised to show up in the first place. The response was mostly, “I am not sure, but we will see.”
The leader got very upset.
He realized that it is not what he wanted from a FC, so he announced that he was selling the house, which was mostly paid for by the co-leader, the very next day.
People were told to demolish their rooms, withdraw the chocobos, or be kicked from the FC.

The house was sold.
Leadership transferred to the co-leader.
The leader left with half of the money.
We were told by the leader that he “did us a favor by not disbanding us”. And that was that.

We became homeless.
That was around April.
The remaining members formed a council of four, which later turned out to be dysfunctional.
Two council members never logged-on much.
One council member loved to flirt and induce drama between guys. She left the FC complaining that a guy wants to get serious with her. Then, her brother joined the FC, and soon started proposing to all the females except for the chocobos in the yard, causing cat fights.
The co-leader, now holding the leader pointer as a council member, was around and among all the drama.
He actually managed to get us a house!
That was an interesting time.

After a big fight with the co-leader, the brother drama queen left the FC with his friend.
They were drama causing, but still were good at recruiting and helping new members. They actually helped me personally a great deal. With them gone, the FC took a hit.
Around that time, I was asked by the co-leader to be an officer to help with the FC affairs.
I agreed to help.

Things were quiet for a short time.
Then, the founder who sold our first house came back after a break. He started to try to contact our members.
The co-leader, now the leader (since the council members were either inactive or left), didn’t like that very much.
He freaked out at every new recruit, thinking that they might be an alt of either the drama queen or the founder.
Some members left since they got caught in between.
Among all these, recruitment stopped.

I made it up by socializing with our neighbors around our new house.
We had our own neighborhood LS <being unproductive>. People in the LS were friendly and helpful.
We slowly built a nice community.
We did dragonskin maps, Diadem, and many other casual things together.

Of course, you cannot avoid drama as long as you have social interactions.
Drama occurred once again when a former council member came back from being inactive.
That former council member had higher skill compared to the rest of the FC/LS, since he focused more on improving personal performance and hardcore raiding while the rest were using the game as a mean to relax after work.
The clash occurred when some LS folks from another FC tried to help our FC members with their Ravana ex clears.
We asked for the former council member’s help, since the leader just recently assigned him an officer role.
Out of the 8 people in the party, 4 never went into the fight before; 1 only did it once and barely knows the mechanics (our leader); 1 helper from another FC knows the mechanics very well so was calling out/explaining via typing. (Some people are not comfortable with voice)
That left us with only 2 functioning fighters: me as the solo healer and the former council member as the strong dps.
Even the solo tank was totally new to the fight and barely met the ilv requirement.
With this setup, wipes are expected. Clear is possible, but not without struggle. Since we are casual, we embrace wipes with a positive attitude and laugh about it.
However, the struggle was proven to be too much to the former council member, who was in a static that can clear the most current ex primal Niddy at the time with ease.
It wore out his patience.
Even though we still cleared the fight after several practice tries (I think we still cleared before we got timed-out), he and the leader became very critical in private chat of the call-out person’s dps, who is from anther FC and was just there to help.
After the former council member announced in the private chat that we were wasting his time, and that each member should try to clear on their own (tho, his brother was one of the person we helped to clear), I told the leader that due to differences in our playing style and expectation of what this FC should be, I quit officer position.
I would also keep the LS and FC apart, since their help was not only not appreciated, but also looked down at.
I would also stop hosting events since the officer demanded that “you are on your own”.

The leader rage quit the leader position, left the FC, and passed the leadership to the former council member.

There goes our second FC leader.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay in a FC where the new leader believed that each person should be on his/her own.
I was ready to leave.
That was late at night, so I just went to sleep.
The next day, when I logged on, I found out that the new leader (former hardcore council member) distributed the 17 million in the FC chest to whomever still active at the time, including himself and his brother, and left with his brother, passing me the leader.
I was left with the remaining few members who were worrying about the fate of their rooms.

Now what?

Well, when I first started to play this game, I just wanted to craft, fish, and garden.
Running a FC never came across my thoughts.

As a leader of a FC, you are directly responsible for the members’ playing experiences.
Maybe our founder sees the members more like his personal army, who must show up to help him clear contents, but it is not what it should be.
Leadership means responsibilities and community service. You have to “give” more than you “take”.
I didn’t want to see this FC fall apart, so I just kept running it.

This FC was redefined as a casual family FC aiming to build a nice and friendly small community where everybody knows everybody. I recruited new members and began hosting events. I also asked for volunteers to help with FC duties with their roles and responsibilities clearly defined and communicated.

Lessons learned from all the dramas:
1) Don’t force members to do things
2) Don’t false advertise (casual FC but hardcore contents or vice versa)
3) Need to define officer roles and responsibilities and make sure people all know about it
4) Leadership needs to acquire leadership skill to handle and manage drama + don’t be part of it
5) Promote better communications between members with different priorities in the game (hardcore/casual)

Personally, I am still learning to be a better FC leader.
As the FC grew bigger, you cannot avoid drama when you have more people.
The leadership will need to learn how to handle that fairly.
People all have their limitations, strength, and weakness, so I am just doing the best I can.

So far, people are having a good time together! We haven’t had any dramas. (Hope none in the future)
I hope the legacy of this FC will continue, even if I stopped playing in the future.

As long as people are having fun in the game, that’s all that matters.

[Admin]

Update for 2018

It has been two years since we first created this forum.
Fast forward to today, in 2018, things are still running fine. Our associated LS boomed to the max-allowed-members (128. Average 30~50 online at night) and the chats are pretty busy all the time. Our FC remained small and maintained a family atmosphere.
Due to personal medical reasons, I was away for half of 2017 while holding the leader pointer. The daily duties were handled by FC officers while I was away and they texted me whenever they needed anything. I always responded on the same day. The FC social events such as competitions kind of stopped, but people continued to be able to do contents with FC and LS members.  We did not experience any major out flow of members, and, even without recruiting, the FC active member counts remain steady at 30 people (10 online every night).

Thank you all who contributed to our FC!!
Together we will make our gaming experience better