Request: Remove the light party requirement from FC workshop projects

[LaylaTsarra]

The thing is they shouldn't lock this behind only FC members

The crafting workstation isn't locked behind FC members. Any crafter can join the party and be counted toward the 4 person limit. I've done that numerous times for friends in other FC's or in link shells i belong to.

[Niraves]

The requirement was always stupid. I say heck yes, please, get rid of it. It's very tedious trying to find three other people to stand around and do absolutely nothing for 45 minutes while I feed materials into the company crafting station. The limit serves no purpose other than to be another stupid gate that exists for no reason other than to be a pain in the ass.

[Dzian]

Even I, a predominately solo player, understands that FC Workshop projects are supposed to be a group effort thing, thus needs a group of people to complete. It defeats the purpose of it being a group project if a single person can do it all alone. If you dont want to deal with social issues then you shouldnt have the perks of a social system. Do some leg work, find another person or two that will join your free company, make more friends who will help with the group project.

It sucks as a group effort though when 3 people just stand there while one person presses the button a few times. It's not exactly interactive.

I wouldn't mind it if it actually involved the 4 crafters somehow like an actual group synth of sorts where each player could only account 25% of the finished part.

But as it is. It's 1 crafter and 3 dead bodies.

Edit if it actually worked better I wouldn't mind it scaling. Something like aetherialxwheels might be easy for a single person to knock up. No party required. But something like mansion glamour might need a full party of 8 as it's a much bigger project.

Could work pretty well as long as it wasn't just 1 person pressing buttons and 7 and bodies

[Talraen]

Aside from being inconvenient for small FCs, the light party requirement fundamentally changes how you build things in general. Because the chance of good/excellent progress is somewhat random, building one phase at a time allows you to be more efficient. However, in my experience, all the materials tend to get built for all the phases (and sometimes even multiple entire crafts) to minimize how often you need to get three people to stand around and AFK. And that means that good or excellent progress tends to leave you with a random assortment of extra materials.

[Galactimus]

It's not the players fault that solo FC's exist.

The housing system has been a mess since it first came out in 2.1. It was SE that decided that the only way to own a house on housing launch day was to be the leader of a Rank 6 FC. And let's be honest here, only the FC leader and maybe one or two VERY close friends get to play with FC housing; the rest are just occasional visitors. The majority never got to experience the Housing System unless they made solo FC's. I would have happily bought a Personal House, though they didn't exist yet, and thus was forced to make a solo FC.

[alimdia]

+1 for removal.

[Lilseph]

Yes, please: Remove it. It serves no purpose.

[Nalfein]

Please remove the requirement... All my FC members are bored to death by just standing in the workshop doing nothing not to mention that they're most of the time in the middle of something and I have to invite them to the same party therefore cancel their queue. Forcing people to participate by improving the system wouldn't work either simply because some people in my FC have zero intentions to craft, they don't like it. Nothing would ever come out by forcing non crafter to craft and that would break the system all together. Regarding synergy while I loved the idea and leveled mine to 60 alone...the entire time I've been playing the game I can count on one hand the time I actually formed a party to make something useful.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I'll mention this and hope they never "fix" it. For those of you with multiple consoles or PCs, you can set up a free trial account and have them sit your workshop. Since they removed the time restriction, you'll never have to pay for that second (or third) account. Now this won't work with Shirogane housing unless you do pay or take advantage of a free log in campaign as free trial accounts can't join a FC.

[ChloeGrace]

I'll mention this and hope they never "fix" it. For those of you with multiple consoles or PCs, you can set up a free trial account and have them sit your workshop. Since they removed the time restriction, you'll never have to pay for that second (or third) account. Now this won't work with Shirogane housing unless you do pay or take advantage of a free log in campaign as free trial accounts can't join a FC.

Exploiting free trials and multiboxing is no solution. It's just bad design and typical dev/Yoshida stubbornness in refusing to do anything about it.
There are multiple threads in the subforums with specifics about how SE might do that.