(3.1) Balancing Rental Airships vs Player Crafted Airships

[Yeldir]

EDIT: I'm not really satisfied with the direction this thread took (besides the nod from Zhexos that this issue is something the devs have been considering deeply all along, which is deeply satisfying to hear), in that my original post makes it seem like I was mostly thinking about gil when I made this thread. This was bad writing on my part.

Truth is, when I started on airships, I had no plans to make money off of them. That was just something that happened as a result of being an early adopter in a market with forced scarcity, exacerbated by the housing problem. I specifically desired to ensure my free company had access to everything the game had to offer. I was, in short, attempting to invest in an experience for myself and my friends.

News of rentable airships came as a blow to me, for two reasons, one of which is extremely selfish: The ability to use the content lockout to recruit individuals eager to experience the content into my free company. That got axed, and a damned good thing it did. The other reason was simply disillusionment that my efforts in no way would provide an interesting experience for my free company. After all, if anybody can just rent a boat at the docks with all of the same features, what role do Free Company airships play beyond an another set of retainers ventures, and gil, gil, gil?

And there's more to this than gil. Keep that in mind as you go through my original post below, and the rest of this thread.

ORIGINAL ORIGINAL POST:
Let's all point and laugh at Voclain, who paid three times what his plot was worth and spent tens of millions of gil on parts and has been getting up at 3 AM for the last two months to dispatch and level what are now apparently the game's most expensive and complicated glamours+retainers.

So, you can go through all that trouble, or you can just walk up and rent one. The question quickly becomes, why go through all that trouble?
You'd probably say, "dusk leather sells for 10 million, you selfish cad!", and it is true. Sort of. Well, it was true. I did sell one, and it was for about that much. They're down to three mil on Famfrit. They'll be down to nothing in a month. In short, there was a window of extreme profitability for the earliest of the early adopters, and that window will be shattered forever long before patch 3.1 hits.

When that window breaks, crafted airships become tremendously expensive investments (5-20 million gil, and hundreds of thousands of FC credits) without returns that could ever possibly compensate for the effort involved in them.

...

A player should want to use a free company airship to explore 3.1's hidden island content, without physically being forced to, or they become gargantuan wastes of time and effort.

Most of you, rightly regarding these things as toys for officers in rich uber-FCs, will receive this idea with a certain contempt. You will kind of want them to be useless. While this sentiment is understandable, given how dumb the housing system is, it isn't rational. It's emotional. You know, rationally, that massive grinds in these games should have some kind of payoff proportionate to the effort involved, especially of large groups of people were busting their buns to attain them.

Wanting FC airships to be useless, expensive glamours is as irrational and unfair as wanting to gate content for players without access to them.

TLDR; Players crafting their FC airships just now and in the future will never make their money back. Dusk Leather will be cheap pretty dang soon. Crafted airships will be functionless glamours that take a bazillion gil.

So the question is, how do you make them worth the time and effort to assemble?

[TheMax1087]

Its actually simple how to balance it. Have every airship(fc or rented) be able to take a max of 8 players(to incentivize having more than one fc airship). Have what island you can go to be determined by the type of ship you own/rent. And finally, have renting the better ships cost much more money

[Cabalabob]

Put a once per day cap on rented ones and no cap on FC ones?

[Gunspec]

I just got 38 craftsman cunning III from my last airship voyage. In total, I've accumulated a couple hundred random materia III, and it looks like the later voyages will bring back grade IV.

All of that, just for converting the miscellaneous crafting mats I've been hording into airship parts. The only things I've made an effort to acquire for the airship are coke and darksteel ore, but the GC seals I get from fate leveling has made that part fairly reasonable. I did all of this totally by myself, and have felt like I've neither invested too much time or effort in it.

It would be nice if the company airships still did something helpful during the upcoming exploration content, but I think given the housing shortage, making the rental ones just as valid is a reasonable thing to do.

And I don't know how you're spending a bazillion gil on what is essentially 2.0 materials, unless you are buying coke off the market for insane prices rather than naturally acquiring it in a day or two of casual play.

[Yeldir]

I just got 38 craftsman cunning III from my last airship voyage. In total, I've accumulated a couple hundred random materia III, and it looks like the later voyages will bring back grade IV.

...

And I don't know how you're spending a bazillion gil on what is essentially 2.0 materials, unless you are buying coke off the market for insane prices rather than naturally acquiring it in a day or two of casual play.

Regarding III and IV crafting materia, and their value, well, I'm of the firm belief that we are in the early stages of what is essentially crafting armageddon, and I base this on the removal of crafted gear as part of the PVE progression cycle. These crafting/gathering materia sell well for the moment because crafters as a whole haven't really accepted what has been done to their role as real. Everyone is collectively assuming it's a hiccup, and it isn't - Yoshi P and co. specifically do not want players using crafted gear to push content.

There is, in short, a brick wall in crafting's future: The point where the majority of crafters/gatherers are finally geared out. What will you make with your shiny AF? Who will you sell it to?

...

In response to your accusation of the wastefulness of buying materials, who said I did much buying? I regard not selling the materials myself and my FC produced as an expense. I could have sold those hundreds of thousands of materials, and if we (my FC) did that, we'd be rich indeed.

What some of you aren't thinking is long-term, and what happens to the economic reward of crafted airships, which is their only allure at present.

[Gunspec]

In response to your accusation of the wastefulness of buying materials, who said I did much buying?

You said "Crafted airships will be functionless glamours that take a bazillion gil.", so I assumed you meant in terms of the market price of the materials, to which I said don't buy coke from the market.

And maybe materia demand will change radically in the future, or maybe it won't. All I know is, my 150 crafted gear is now stuffed full of +CP materia that I wouldn't have spent money on normally. I received and consumed the market equivalent of 500k gil in materia, and I can now craft better as a result.

If things change in the future concerning the value of airship rewards, they can add or subtract items from the airship voyages easily enough. The rewards are currently good, and "in the long term" they can change the rewards.

What they really shouldn't do is lock other players out of content that is REPLACING a third expert dungeon in patch 3.1, just because there is a housing shortage that SE hasn't properly addressed.

[Yeldir]

What they really shouldn't do is lock other players out of content that is REPLACING a third expert dungeon in patch 3.1, just because there is a housing shortage that SE hasn't properly addressed.

I agree with this, of course. Even said so in my original post.

No, you're not thinking in the long-term. You're acting like the current set of crafting content is it, completely ignoring that subsequent patches will add onto it and create new demand. Is there a brick wall in the future for crafting? Sure, just like there was in 2.0 as well. Thing is, new patches gave crafters a new wall to hit. That's not even considering things like the Relic quest, which added most of the demand for Materia anyway... Wouldn't be too surprised to see SE add another "Sell your soul for Materia" stage in the coming patches...

Then, of course, is the fact that you're ignoring the other allure Airship Voyages present; A source for free Grade 3 Actions.

Having crafted in 1.0, and again in 2.0, and again in 3.0, I can tell you that the current wall is nothing like what was present at any stage of the game, and reflects a specific change in design philosophy. Let me break it down for you:

In 1.0, almost everything was crafted. The economy was player driven, often to impractical extremes. It drove a huge number of players from the game.

In 2.0, as you well know, crafted gear for PVE progression was rotated in, in a controlled manner. There was usually a tier of crafted gear from a few classes at a time that was viable (and occasionally optimal) to wear in the cutting edge raids. I made a great deal of gil at the launch of ARR on astral rings and the like - properly melded, these were of tremendous use in pushing the first coil.

3.0 is where things take an abrupt and unprecedented plunge. There was no viable crafted gear for PVE progression at launch, and the "crafting patch" has introduced a limited selection of ilvl 180 gear with a ton of limitations that you will almost never see on another player, not only for reasons of extreme scarcity due to the scrip system we all know and loathe, but because of the "death" of materia. Grade 5 materia cannot be gotten in quantities necessary for crafted i180 to provide an alternative to i190 and i200 stuff. They don't want Grade 5 materia accessible to players until after its window of usefulness in cutting edge raid content has passed.

To top it off, SE specifically excluded 180 combat jewelry because they knew it would be flexible enough to be useful in raids.

If all of that doesn't clue you in on the change in design philosophy, SE has flat out stated that they were displeased with the role crafted equipment played in accelerating content clearing in ARR. If you find that unbelievable, I can find the statement for you, with a bit of digging.

Finally, it takes three days to spin up a Tier III FC buff. Three days for twenty-four hours. These won't be a huge benefit unless they allow us to install three aetherial wheel tables in our homes. And even then, consider how many FC credits we'll be burning on fuel to reach the far islands necessary to produce these buffs. It's 10+ units of fuel on these trips. I'd be surprised if it wasn't a net loss in terms of credits.

[Burne]

Is it possible to rent airships solo or is that planned for 3.1?

[Nalien]

To top it off, SE specifically excluded 180 combat jewelry because they knew it would be flexible enough to be useful in raids.

Isn't this exactly what they've been doing with crafted accessories for a while now? Heck, I just checked 2.4 and 2.5 to be sure, it is. Patch 2.4 added Wootz/etc. gear as crafted i110. Patch 2.5 added the Platinum series of i110 accessories... Seem to remember a similar deal with 2.2 and 2.3... This really is nothing new...

Rarity of materials and utility of gear are really the only issues I see with crafting at this point, though I really do not think that is going to be enough to create some "crafting armageddon", and certainly not if they continue to make adjustments to it. The only way this would have a negative impact on Airships is if everyone just stops caring about gathering/crafting, in which case SE would absolutely have to make serious adjustments, otherwise they'd be throwing resources to develop a system everyone nobody uses.

What I see right now though, is the same staggered recipe release we've always had, which means every patch should be bringing in new demand. I see Blue/Red Scrips as a carbon copy of Law/Esoterics, which makes me think 3.2 will be phasing out Blue Scrips and removing the cap on Red. At which point I imagine all that hard melded gathering/crafting AF2 might get replaced for another Forager's/Artisan's set, which will again need melding. If people have given up on crafting by that point, we'd have a problem, but considering all of my Airships have already paid for themselves and then some, I'm not sure what the point of all this is... I'll still be able to sell Materia the same way I always have been able to... Perhaps I wont be bringing in millions, but everything my Airships bring in has simply be gravy for a while now. An issue perhaps for newer FCs, but for those of us who've already abused the heck out of all these new items... It's a laughable complaint at best, more so when this entire argument is built off "maybes". They literally just need to give us Sphere Scrolls II, and the concept of Materia becoming valueless just becomes completely vapid, as does "My Airship which has already made me 10m" along with it.

Also, regarding rarity of materials... It's perhaps worth remembering exactly what they've spoken of for rewards for these upcoming islands... I don't think they've ever mentioned tomestones or gear, the only thing I've seen is "Once you've cleared out the enemies, gathers can come along to harvest nodes", perhaps its nothing, perhaps its something. I expect a new source of Darksteel/etc., but the new stuff would certainly be a welcome addition.

Finally, it takes three days to spin up a Tier III FC buff. Three days for twenty-four hours. These won't be a huge benefit unless they allow us to install three aetherial wheel tables in our homes. And even then, consider how many FC credits we'll be burning on fuel to reach the far islands necessary to produce these buffs.

Grade 3 Actions can only be acquired using the Aetherial Wheel. This isn't like the Grade 1 or 2 Actions, where you can reasonably just spend FC Credits to get them instantly, if you want Grade 3 Actions (and why wouldn't you?) you're going to have to spin them on the Aetherial Wheel and either use materials from your Voyages, or buy the materials from another FC, who'll presumably be very happy to continue to be getting even more profit out of their Airships.

It's 10+ units of fuel on these trips. I'd be surprised if it wasn't a net loss in terms of credits.

At 100 Credits per? No. Not by a long shot. Grade 1~2 Actions currently cost me 1,000~6,000 Credits, mostly 3,000 and 6,000. I'd imagine Grade 3 Actions would cost 9,000 Credits if they get added in such a way. Just looking at what it would take me to farm the right Clusters for Grade 3 Actions, the Credits spent of fuel should be less than buying a Grade 1 Heat of Battle...

[Nalien]

What some of you aren't thinking is long-term, and what happens to the economic reward of crafted airships, which is their only allure at present.

No, you're not thinking in the long-term. You're acting like the current set of crafting content is it, completely ignoring that subsequent patches will add onto it and create new demand. Is there a brick wall in the future for crafting? Sure, just like there was in 2.0 as well. Thing is, new patches gave crafters a new wall to hit. That's not even considering things like the Relic quest, which added most of the demand for Materia anyway... Wouldn't be too surprised to see SE add another "Sell your soul for Materia" stage in the coming patches...

Then, of course, is the fact that you're ignoring the other allure Airship Voyages present; A source for free Grade 3 Actions.