(3.1) Balancing Rental Airships vs Player Crafted Airships

[Felis]

How about SE stops pandering to the lowest common denominator and actually keeps this an FC related activity. I'm tired of people who subscribe to a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE GAME only to play solo, then they go on the official forums and complain about how everything doesn't cater to them. Its ridiculous. There is absolutely ZERO reasons to have free companies in this game outside and a house where everybody can hang out and look at eachother.

Its just infuriating when they pitch this idea as an FC related activity and then they are like "oh everybody can do it now! look forward to 3.1 guys!" No.

Just make a check that the player have to be in any FC to allow him to enter an airship.
No reasson to be against the standard airship for those without housing.

[colenzo]

That is actually really reasonable.

[Vateri]

Add areas the rentals cannot reach/items only obtainable from the FC Airship. If the differences is just "Well the FC airship looks cooler!" there's no point in making an FC ship.

[Yeldir]

This entire thread is moot. We have crafted 2 airships in my FC, and are almost done our third. It has cost us nothing but time. We did not at any point HAVE to spend gil on anything other than the workshop, but crafting the ships requires only mats and time, and time spent in game is the reason why you're logged in in the first place right? Furthermore the ships BRING US stuff, so there is a gain. Finally us crafting our airships has not held back any of our members from being able to do anything. We have not required OR requested any mats or gil from ANY members, unless they themselves wanted to contribute. To be frank crafting airships has been easy, fun, and monetarily painless, and even if there are some small costs, so what, things are supposed to cost something (time or money take your pick).

So, maelor. You're cool with the idea of airships originally being billed as something free companies would put together for the explicit goal of exploring otherwise exclusive islands, and then getting, instead, a set of complex retainers that at most one or two people in a free company get to "enjoy"?

You're not seeing a tiny bit of bait and switch, there? Little bit of room for disappointment? Just a smidgeon of catering to casuals going on, there? No?

[Shirobi]

Yea the OP is just being greedy. Because you can make 10m a pop on an item the only reason is because there are only a few people with access to airships, because you have to have a FC house no personal houses so the number of people who can use airships is like 100 or so.

There are tons of people who craft who want the mats that make new pets, or new furnishings for our personal houses.

I haven't liked airships since they release they are just a tool for the FC leader to play with and locks almost everyone else out of doing new content and getting new minions from it. I welcome the new airships in Ishguard.

Could not agree with this more. The OP here is showing nothing but selfishness.

[Shirobi]

So, maelor. You're cool with the idea of airships originally being billed as something free companies would put together for the explicit goal of exploring otherwise exclusive islands, and then getting, instead, a set of complex retainers that at most one or two people in a free company get to "enjoy"?

You're not seeing a tiny bit of bait and switch, there? Little bit of room for disappointment? Just a smidgeon of catering to casuals going on, there? No?

Why would the baiting and switching of content, which I agree with you on, be "catering to casuals"? What do casuals have to do with anything?

[Laerad3993]

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?

I purchased 3 ships from the MBs, it cost me less than 30m, and I've already made 14m back since doing so from Shrub Seedlings and Materia alone. So IDK what you're on about here with Dusk Leather being the only income from these ventures.... Otherwise I agree with everything else you had to say.

[Kuwagami]

Mats were never bought with Myth - only with philosophy - and those were uncapped. Hence the quick drop to 9k after 3 weeks in ARR

lol. The mats were still selling at 30k+ when 2.1 started.

We discussed this a bit in the Letter from the Producer LIVE XXIV, but we are planning to introduce some unique aspects to Free Company-specific airships. We'll share details on this on Lodestone and such in the future, so please look forward to it!

Just something that has come to my mind : what about FCs that are less than 24-men large ? Will we be able to fill our ranks with outsiders are will we be forced to go in parties of 8, or through Ishgard ?