Group crafting & how it can tie into Linkshell Housing
Keep in mind that this is pretty big on the wishful-thinking front. It's one of a million ways to tackle something like this, but if it's done in the right way, I think the potential is pretty huge.
While I realize that the development team is hard at work on countless other systems right now, I’ve been bouncing around the idea of creative ways to integrate group crafting into the game at the linkshell-level and thought I would share my thoughts here. If any of this happens to get passed by the developers, maybe it will help to create some fun ways to help crafters give back to their Linkshell and back to the world in general.
This thing is long, so a TL;DR is at the bottom if reading isn't your thing.
The Concept
The entire purpose of my ideas are to develop a sense of community between crafters and to give linkshells some alternative activities beyond dungeon raiding that will benefit the individuals AND the group. As a secondary bonus, some of these ideas may also help to act as a way to remove a fair amount of gil from circulation in a world already completely drowning in money.
I remember when crafting was first announced and Tanaka had rattled off the idea of group crafts and showed us an image of a cake that several culinarians had created. While that seemed pretty interesting to a point, I had a hard time wrapping my head around what exactly that type of idea would be practical. Would you then be able to break the cake down into 50 slices and share them with linkshell members for some sort of collective bonus? Was it just a group crafting leve that awarded simple SP and XP? It was really just an example, but it got me thinking about what sort of features I’d like to see as a crafter in a group setting.
What I propose is directly tied into both linkshells and to the (potential) player housing system -- Guild Halls (or in the case of XIV, Linkshell Halls?). It’s definitely not the only way to approach group crafting, but it’s one of the more practical ones with a ton of potential community value.
Some Details
I’ll break this idea down into couple key parts:
- Purchasing a plot of “land” within a home city
- Building the guild hall
- Maintaining and upgrading the hall
Now before anyone jumps on me over having to purchase your player housing, just bear with me for a minute. I’ll touch a little on that at the end. For now, consider this LINKSHELL housing, not just player storage.
Purchasing the land
I’m not going to get into a numbers game over it, but the purpose behind purchasing a plot is to give a guild a centralized location to convene -- hall or not. Once the plot is purchased, you could bind yourself to it in the same way you create a favored teleport location so that you can return for a low anima price at any time. It would also allow for some varied customization in placement of different elements, and could lead to future developments like FFXI's gardening.
With the plot purchased, the leader of the linkshell could then be given the authority to begin a housing project. The breadth of the project would be based entirely on how much effort the linkshell is willing to put into it. When I say breadth, I mean the size of the hall, types of materials, and different potential facilities that could go into it. There are lots of would-be variables that could determine how many materials and the amount of time required to complete it from start to finish -- but that's not the point of this whole write-up.
Building
The meat of this idea is in the crafting -- It just took me a while to get to the point here, but it needed some exposition.
Once the land is purchased and the linkshell members are able to meet at the site, building can begin. I’ll break this section down further into two stages. 1) Material Collection
In the first stage, and once the leader of the linkshell has made the call to begin the project, A crafting “hub” would be setup on the land that members could begin interacting with. At this stage, crafters would begin to provide basic building materials to a hall “bank”, so to speak. The required materials would be variable depending on the size of the hall you’re building, but here is just a rough example of what I’m talking about.
http://i.imgur.com/g0RGZ.jpgThis is a huge oversimplification, but you get the idea. Materials like planks, nails, metal bracings, sand for glass production, etc. are collected, stored in a “bank”, and players are free to come and go as they please and donate different materials to the project. The materials would be able to integrate both gatherers AND crafters in order to get the job done, and depending on materials, nearly any type of craft could be involved at this stage. Once all materials have been collected, the linkshell leader can then move the project to stage 2 -- Construction
2) Construction
Once the construction stage has been started, crafters would then be able to interact with the hub in a different way. Rather than simply dropping off items that have already been crafting, they would be able to synth AT the hub -- working with the materials directly via a menu prompt similar to interacting with an Aetheryte crystal or calling a retainer. The focus of this stage is on time and member contribution -- failing these synths wouldn’t deplete the stored materials, but just wouldn’t make any progress. If this sounds far too tedious, then consider the possibility of chain bonuses that reward continuous successful synths then. Small detail.
The construction of a building itself could easily require contributions from every type of craft (except maybe Culinarian directly) -- Carpenters for the framework, blacksmiths and armorers for the metalwork, alchemists for glass-making, etc.
The stage would be broken down into different sections of the building itself such as floors, walls, roof or foundation, and contributions can be made to each section freely by linkshell members
Crafters would be free to contribute as much or as little as they want. Only have the time to drop by and complete 10 carpentry synths for the roof? No big deal. Want to spend an evening with 4-5 friends finishing up the walls? Great! A project menu would keep track of each section of the construction and how far along it is, as well as what crafts are needed to finish each one.
3) Upgrading and Maintaining
It's typical for linkshells to grow and develop, so being able to make additions to the hall would be a necessary feature. Adding space or expanding to a second floor would give linkshells some nice flexibility, but could also make for some really interesting designs that could be shown off given the ability to visit other shells' halls.
A system like this wouldn’t completely replace any sort of individual player storage, since not everyone wants to be a part of a large group. Individual storage could still be handled by the current retainer system or by personal player housing, assuming the developers have been thinking through how to approach that at some point. This is more about giving Linkshells a place to congregate and work together. The other perks are just icing.
Summary
The entire point of this idea is to breathe some much-needed life into TYPES of crafting that are possible beyond just armor and weapon production while promoting teamwork towards a common goal. It would help to give linkshells a sense of identity and pride, and gives the players all something tangible to sink their gil into too. The sense of accomplishment in building something big with your friends would be pretty satisfying too!
Conclusion
Through all this, I realize there is a pretty absurd amount of information to keep in mind with something of this scale. There are lots of things that could be done poorly, and to some this could sound like a giant slog instead of a fun outlet for crafters, but I’m interested to see what others think of a system like this. I’m sure I’m not the only one to work through an idea like this, and I’ve seen lots of talk about player housing and group crafting as separate entities.
TL;DR
A proposition to allow linkshells to purchase property, giving crafters a space where they can work together as a team to build linkshell halls and other interesting large-scale projects. Crafting and gathering disciplines would both be able to contribute to the projects through gathering resources and crafting materials. After the materials are collected, crafters then work together to construct the product across many disciplines.