Workshops - getting 4 people in there to progress a tier is getting tedious

[Jojoya]

The restriction, or at least some restriction like it, is necessary to discourage people from using it as a personal workshop. It's fine as it is. If you can't get four people together to sit in the workshop, you're an FC in name only anyway. If anything, I think they should increase the stringency of the requirement such that the four people all have to belong to the FC.

It's a weak way to discourage it.

I easily could have turned my alt's FC into a private workshop when the rest of the FC had stopped playing if I had wanted to.

I know another player on the server who does use his as a private workshop, making airship and sub parts to sell to other FCs who don't make their own for whatever reason.

SE doesn't seem to feel the same way as you when it comes to how many members a FC should have to be considered a FC.

A lvl 1 crafter is enough.

To just sit in the workshop and do nothing, sure. But a level 1 crafter can't contribute materials to a project. You've got to have the class and level specified on the fabricator to add the material.

It was ironic last year when my FC leader had to trade a bunch of steel ingots to my alt to add to the fabricator. He was level 70 BSM at the time and had made the ingots himself. The fabricator was requiring level 26 ARM, which he hadn't unlocked let alone leveled.

It's a rather nonsensical restriction to have, and probably contributes to the lack of workshop use as much as anything else. Hard for a FC to use a workshop when they don't have players with the right level DOH classes to add materials even though they can easily go to the marketboard and vendors to buy those materials regardless of their job.

But it does a great job of making private workshops profitable for omnicrafters. Just pay random players some gil to afk in the workshop and make those parts to sell to the FCs who lack members with the needed DoH jobs.