Feature Suggestion: Overnight, Auto & Multi-crafting & Player shops!

[CartherineZero]

Player shops!
With the release of Stormblood we were gifted with the chance to visit the beautiful city of Kugane. Kugane is an amazing city however why is such a city empty in certain areas? Naturally, people are going to go about their business near the market boards and relevant NPCs however the rest of the city would never or rarely see life, it will be there just for aesthetics purposes. I hope this feature will result in these areas to eventually be populated by the community.

Below i have highlighted the structures in Kugane that have no apparent purpose as of patch 4.0.1. Areas around these buildings, more noticeably, the northern part of Kugane often rarely has any players.


This also applies to Ala Mhigan Quarters in The Lochs as most of you might know is really empty!


As such, i propose that we convert these empty buildings into player shops that are rentable! These shops will work like how private apartments work. (in a perfect world there will be no loading time for entering and leaving). Players can have their retainers at the counter to do the sales like how an NPC shop works and the shop itself maybe designed by furniture similar to how housing works. Certain machines can be also implemented in these shops to help crafters and gatherers increase their production which i will explain later on!

But didn't they do that with retainers back in 1.0!? it was horrible and a big mess!
Yes, that is true however it was never done properly like this. In 1.X they allowed everyone with a retainer to have a player shop and "shop" is not the right word to describe it as it was just your retainer standing in the open not a physical shop! This feature aims to be a luxury for crafters who can afford it!
i will address some of the issues that might be brought up with such a system and why they don't pose much of a problem as you may think!

Houses are on a monthly rent basis
Many people have seen an issue with player housing where there are times when one player may be able to buy an entire ward or a section of a ward. To prevent this, these shops will be on a monthly rent basis, every month the shop will take a fee of about 500k to 1000k from the player, should the player not meet the rent for the month, he will be given a week's notice after which the shop will be relinquished and be available to be rented again. The furniture belonging to the player from the shop will be able to be reclaimed from an assigned NPC similar to private chambers in player housing.

500k to 1000k a month? Who would buy that!?
We'll look at what kind of players may want to own a player shop. These players are going to be players focused on gathering and crafting. these players hope to achieve recognition and wider reach by having a physical shop which if done well, majority of players on the server will know where to patronize. The rent amount will pose no problem to these players as the profit outweigh the costs. This also prevents abuse from players who think to use these shops as a "house". These shops are meant for sales and crafting and to players who enjoy doing business hence without profits a normal player will not be able to sustain the shop long term. This price can be adjusted based on server price and demand.

Overnight, Auto & Multi-crafting
To player who own these shops, certain furniture/machinery can be introduced to help increase production offline and online! For example we can have a machine that duplicates all actions performed by the player resulting in x2 yield in products. Players can also assign a machine to produce a certain product while they are offline, they only need to input the actions they want the machine to execute and deposit the needed materials.

Closing note
I understand fully that this feature is totally optional! The game wont die without this feature but having this feature can bring so much life to the quiet parts of the game. More often than not i see players on party finders advertising their houses as "cafes" or "restaurants". Why not have this feature to enable players to gather and socialize, perhaps we'll see a popular player owned cafe that players like to hang around? An alchemy store with cheap wares that raiders love to restock at?