Company workshop crafting

I am from a very small "family & friends" based FC. We started off with 8 people, and are now down to 3 active players due to people quitting the game.

We have a medium house, and a workshop, but have had to resort to buying airship pieces off the MB because of the arbitrary "must be in a full party" restriction for company crafting.

I have no idea why this is a thing, when we already have a system in place preventing one person from fully building an item too soon, by restricting their turn ins per day.

Would you please consider removing the light party restriction from this so that we can actually build something in our workshop? I don't want to have to beg via the PF for someone to come and afk in our workshop while we do turn ins, and recruitment for a small family based FC is very difficult, as there isn't much we have to offer over large FC's besides our winning personalities.

I realize there are bigger problems with housing, such as the lack of availability, but this seems like a very arbitrary design that could easily be scrapped while keeping the spirit of limiting individual members from contributing too much per day.

I think SE is trying to encourage small free companies to expand, so that more players can enjoy free company housing. It'll be rough even with four or five active players, supporting an airship fleet - you'll have to skip a lot of FC buffs to pay for their fuel and registrations. The first registered ship is cheap, but the costs increase dramatically.

Making progress difficult for a smaller free company is something I can understand. A small FC will have less people doing turn ins, and as you say, less FC points to spend on fuel and such than a large one. They will naturally progress much more slowly. I am perfectly fine with that. I don't want an instant fleet, just the ability to start using the workshop.

But this system pretty much stops us from making any progress whatsoever, which is pretty crappy. It seems like a pretty flimsy justification. And if you're saying that they hope more people will abandon their small FCs to join bigger ones because of this, just to open up housing space..... well I hope this isn't the case because it's not only crappy, it's also extremely lazy on the devs part.

All you need is to assamble a light party of crafters, any job and any level will do, and they don't need to be FC members. If you got some friends which don't belong to your FC you can invite them to your party and all they have to do is show up in your workshop while you push the button. Then they can all be dismissed and you can call them again when you need them.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I would rather just be able to do my turn ins when I have the time to do them instead of asking people to afk in my workshop. As our members are not always online at the same time it would greatly simplify things.

Again, I don't see why this restriction is in place as it adds nothing to the process. I'm not asking for a workaround, I'm asking if a pointless restriction can be removed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valleo

Thanks for the suggestion, but I would rather just be able to do my turn ins when I have the time to do them instead of asking people to afk in my workshop. As our members are not always online at the same time it would greatly simplify things.

Again, I don't see why this restriction is in place as it adds nothing to the process. I'm not asking for a workaround, I'm asking if a pointless restriction can be removed.

---

I can't agree more, at least, please relay above feedback to the DEV.

They need to either remove this restriction, or at least make it relevant.

I'm reminded of Synergy in Final Fantasy XI, and I sure as hell don't want that, but if they made the Light Party requirement such that you spread out across the workshop to do various special actions to advance progress, I wouldn't particularly mind. Just make it so you out right cannot fail in any meaningful way. Have it so you can boost Quality to try for Excellent/Outstanding Progress, and any failure simply reduces the Quality you built up trading items in. That, I think, would be enjoyable. Slap a EXP reward for every crafter involved and it'd at least make me feel better about wasting 3 other peoples time...

I'd probably rather just see it removed out right though... I kind of get what they were trying to do with it, create a nice sense of community with the Workshop, but the thing is... You can't force people to do that... Let people enjoy it that way naturally, if you attempt to force people it just sours the whole thing. Either you make it so a Light Party is actually required, or you don't. Trying to get people to recruit or work together for something that can absolutely be soloed simply doesn't work.

Right now my biggest issue with this is how much time and materials it forces me to waste; I have to wait for 3 other people to come online to advance these things. For me, the efficient way to go about this, in order to waste as little of everyones time and maximize production, is for me to gather all the materials (for stage 1, 2, and 3) in one go. Everyone gathers up, I trade in, we watch a cutscene. Done. If I get an Excellent or Outstanding Progress though? Welp, guess I don't need these. Now, I can put those towards future projects just fine, but my inventory space doesn't appreciate that. I'd much rather just collect items for the first stage, advance the project, then collect items for the second stage and adjust what I need to collect depending on the level of Progress. Can't really do that in any meaningful way without forcing three people to AFK in the Workshop all day. I would much rather have my Free Company members go out and do whatever the hell they want to do, than force them to do such a thing, if they want to help? Great. If they don't? No problem. As it is I have to force them to show up every now and then for absolutely no reason. If they could be involved or got rewards I'd be a bit happier with the set up, but as it is I don't want to waste their time any more than I have to.

We are now left with 3 actives including myself and a couple others that rarely come online. It gets very annoying that I can do all the gathering and crafting in 1 day by myself but yet need a party to advance.
I have yet to reach a contribution cap turning in everything myself all in the same day completing phases back-to-back.

People are more apt help with things like maps, etc than something there is no reward for. So when it comes time to take the ship places, it will be easier to get help because people will like the chance at getting stuff and you can negotiate rewards.

Maybe an alternative to doing away with this requirement should be that once you advance, you cannot contribute anymore until the next earth day, and if you already met your contribution cap, you cannot advance until it resets.I would gladly forego being able to contribute for the remainder of the day if that means that I can advance the craft myself. If you do get into a party and advance, then your contribution cap remains unaffected.

Try shouting in your ward, I always help when I see someone asking. Setting up PF can help too.

If you have a LS with friends you could ask for help. It's not THAT hard. You can even craft multiple stages and progress everything at once.

Change to help out smaller fc would be great imo. I mange with a very small fc myself but I can understnd your position completely.

Customers are customers, if a fc exists, be it 1 peron or 1736736 ppl strong ...its still a fc and should be able to advance on its own.

I think the only benefit should be more ships the bigger the fc...NOT participation restrictions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Haoji

Try shouting in your ward, I always help when I see someone asking. Setting up PF can help too.

If you have a LS with friends you could ask for help. It's not THAT hard. You can even craft multiple stages and progress everything at once.

---

It's kind of frustrating to keep seeing these responses. No one asked how to work around the current system. We know we can ask for help. IIRC, that was the lame answer Yoshi P gave when asked this same question. That's not the point.

There's no reason why this restriction should be in place. This isn't like a raid or dungeon that is finely tuned to a party of 4, 8 or 24, and we can even do unsynched versions of the first two without a full party now. This isn't like synergy from FF 11 where you have to work together. It's completely pointless and serves only as a roadblock to using the workshop.

if they remove this restriction, we should get Personal Workshops and Personal Airships as well.

This is a MMO, the whole point is to work together towards a goal while interacting with people. It would be nice to have more to it, but it's easier to just work around it for now and complain in the General Discussion forum. Few people read this sub-board. Good luck.

I find most people just complain about this rather than actually trying it. I'm in a solo FC and -thought- this would be a hassle but it really isn't for two reasons:

- There is no limit to the number of materials you can hand in. You can collect ALL of the materials for an entire airship before forming your light party (everything you need for all three phases of all four parts.)

- It takes less than 10 minutes to hand-in all the parts of an airship

It's quite a simple task to go to Idyllshire or your Housing Ward and /shout "Reward: 25k. 10 minutes of AFK Workshop Crafting." My Light parties fill up instantly. Six airship tiers completed with no hassle what-so-ever. Most people are just sitting AFK in these two zones and are more than happy to get paid for sitting AFK in a Workshop.

Welp. I'm not sure what's more disappointing, the fact that we have to deal with pointlessly complicated systems for things in this game (like workshops crafting, glamours, ect), or the fact that the answer from other players to requests to have them removed are just "eh, deal with it".

Since I've gotten more "just interact with people by paying them to AFK while you do this solo!" responses than anything else, I guess I'll just drop this. In hindsight, I guess I don't actually expect the devs to do anything about this until airships become actual content most people want to do, and the majority of the playerbase starts complaining about the ridiculous system.

Why don't people create a linkshell and try to help each other out beyond the FC boundaries for this?
It's like "why can't we all get along" kinda thing isn't it?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valleo

Welp. I'm not sure what's more disappointing, the fact that we have to deal with pointlessly complicated systems for things in this game (like workshops crafting, glamours, ect), or the fact that the answer from other players to requests to have them removed are just "eh, deal with it".

Since I've gotten more "just interact with people by paying them to AFK while you do this solo!" responses than anything else, I guess I'll just drop this. In hindsight, I guess I don't actually expect the devs to do anything about this until airships become actual content most people want to do, and the majority of the playerbase starts complaining about the ridiculous system.

---

Actually, in 3.1-3.2ish there is suppose to be content added where FCs can go TO the Sky Islands that were discovered with the air ships.

There are a couple of points raised by the TC that are not valid, or can be circumvented.

First off, there is no restriction on how many items can be turned in towards a FC Project per day. None. Having crafted four different airship parts in the FC workshop in one day recently, I can personally attest to this. Any such restriction is emplaced by the FC, not by the system.

Second, you can pre-make the stuff you need. The Invincible-II Airship parts, for example, each require 9 Garlond Steel. Why wait for the second or third phase of the thing (when you can look and see what all the materials are per stage) to make them, when you can just make all 36 in advance? If you are concerned about the exp from the hand ins, distribute the pre-made hand ins among the people present, on the basis of class or whatever, so that everyone can reap some of the exp. Otherwise, pre-make everything you need for whatever part(s) you want to craft and then get the Light Party together, in order to reduce your demands upon their time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SendohJin

if they remove this restriction, we should get Personal Workshops and Personal Airships as well.

---

I agree with the personal airships. I am not part of an fc and bought my own personal house that way if i ever choose to be in an fc i don't lose all the work i've invested. though now the whole airship ventures only for fc's i cant get crafting mats I want without being a member of an fc or paying ridiculous amounts on the marketboard. This is really ridiculous to basically mandate "YOU MUST BE IN AN FC" to experience parts of the game. How they are restricting it you basically either join an fc or You buy an additional plot of land as a personal fc just for airships. so now instead of people having congestion in residential areas from lots of fc's and personal housing now you also have players basically buying two houses.

As others have pointed out there are no restrictions on turn ins and you don't have to have a strictly FC party to do the phases. The entire point of them putting the light party restriction on was to attempt to prevent people from having a 1 person FC using airships and to foster cooperation between people in an MMO. Its not meant for one person to do all by themselves, its supposed to be a group project everyone works towards. I know that's not always the case, my FC for instance loves the rewards of the airship but none of them bother to ever donate or come into the workshop. Luckily I have a crafting LS and we help each other by taking turns running to each other's FC houses to push phases for a few minutes before moving on to the next person's FC. Kinda like a map party. I usually gather up everything I need for the stages and just ask if anyone else needs help in the LS. Its also pretty interesting to visit other houses and see what projects they're on.

Its sad when you have a game genre built on community, friends, social aspects, and group activities and bit by bit soloist minded people have decayed that idea that made the genre great to what we have today in mmorpg's. Everyone expects everything with the least work, least social interaction, and immediate rewards....