Airship Housing

[Esmoire]

One of the most awesome parts of Final Fantasy are airships. Sadly, the experience of personally-owned airships in FFXIV is lacking. The closest thing we have are Free Company airships, which are kind of like... glorified retainer ventures. You don't actually get to do anything with them.

It's a shame, because while they have existed in the series, it for me it was FFVI where I told myself "I want one." In that game, Setzer's airship seemed rather baller, with its staff, refreshments, tables for games (he's a gambler so it would make sense), and just a really classy aesthetic.

It would be awesome if FFXIV had airships you could actually own and board, either as an individual or Free Company. You could put any interior furniture you can get now on the inside, any exterior furniture you want on the outside. What is more, while existing housing exteriors probably won't work, you could have a system where the player could personalize and have a lot of control over the look of their airship. In addition, you can make airships come in a wide range of sizes, as long as the player can afford it, without having to worry about limited availability.

How it would work is the player character could call their airship at any field location, and it would drop a ladder, which serves like a housing door (with similar control over permissions). Airships could also have mini aetherytes installed for teleportation, and players can access their airships (and those of others) from any of the airship landings (again, with permissions). When you are on the airship, it works just like housing does normally.

The deck of the airship would serve as the housing exterior, though it would be an instanced zone in the clouds. While I am not sure if FFXIV can support airships the size this system actually being out in the maps (it would probably look really awful anyways), they could also potentially drop the player off at a destination if they have flight access in that area. Otherwise, you get off wherever you got on.

Side note: Players won't be able to board off in areas they can't teleport to yet, so a sprout can't get onto an airship and disembark in The Tempest. Would probably just default them to their home or wherever they climbed on.

Awesome benefits of airship housing:

• Works as instanced housing; everyone can have an unlimited number of houses of any size
• Offers exterior fixtures and more personalization, unlike apartments
• Can access them from almost anywhere at any almost any time
• A way cooler implementation of a hallmark of Final Fantasy than we have now
• Potentially a new and awesome way for your friends or Free Company to arrive in style

Anyway, just a neat thought, perhaps for a future expansion. Thanks for reading. <3

[Yshtola]

You can board your Free Company airships...

[Esmoire]

You can board your Free Company airships...

Yeah but like in the most disenchanted and least cool way possible. Anyway, this thread is much less about the lameness of FC airships, and more about an awesome way to experience housing.

Edit - If it helps at all, in terms of scale and grandiose, the interior of the Prima Vista is much closer to what I mean. Only... way more livable.

[Sauteed]

I like the idea of personal airships, or FC airships that you can go in and just chill or fly around etc.

I don't know how difficult it would be to add this kind of content, but I think it would be something that would catch on pretty quick, and really kind of set FFXIV on a tier above the rest of the MMORPG pack even more than it may already be in general.
If it doesn't happen tho, I still do wish they'd consider instanced housing in a serious and broad way. More than the 100 item limit apartments, with no yard or garden kind of thinking. I do love my apartment tho. And FC room, and FC, and personal house.
I'd get a new cool tingly feeling tho if I could customize an airship and have my homies fly around in it, or with them on theirs.

[Moltera]

I really like this idea! It definitely calls back to an older time in FF where you could live in the Airships you flew on. A lot of the airships in previous games had that facilities on board that could serve as a form of inn/residence or central base. My favourites were the airships in Final Fantasy IX, the Highwind of FFVII which had a Chocobo stable on board and Balamb Garden from FFVIII which was a mobile shelter. Plus FFXII and FFIX each having full on airship fleets with housing/living quarters (Red Rose, Alexandria's Flag Ship in FFIX, The Prima Vista theatre ship in FFIX being two examples).


So there's definitely something in the series which would provide for this. I can also see this reducing the demand for Housing in the conventional way, it'd be amazing and I'd love to have something like this in the game - even with a crafting/customisation factor which could be utilised for DoL/DoH as well.

[Shougun]

Airship! Like the space droid in Portal or the lego guy and spaceships, but Airships! lol

I -really- enjoy FF airships, it is a has been a huge "aww yissss" moment for me consistently in the games that provide it. FFXIV doesn't really provide it that, minus a few short quips, like the raid boss, and so just it being airship content has me excited as I'd like to see that in their mmo.

Personal house of course being another thing I think quite interesting, so both together is lovely . I agree that airships also have a lot of interesting features, like being able to change your back drop, logical accessibility, nice upgrade logic that is allows room for system changes without much effort (room based, not based on fixed locations, etc).

[TDChangeling]

Just throwing another like on the barbie.

This is a great idea with a lot of potential.

[ItMe]

I think it'd be a real cool touch if you could sometimes look up and see an FC airship in the sky.

[Leareaux]

I'm for it. I've always liked the Redbills Hesdquarters so anything like that + the possibility of near infinite private housing I'm down for.

[Limonia]

Airships have often been an important part of Final Fantasy games, so I'm all for it!

Maybe this would be a great way to introduce instanced housing.

Using a company workshop on them would be kind of weird, but they could just finally decouple workshops from housing with that.

I don't think you could actively fly them though, but you could at least kind of "teleport" with them, and depending in which area you are, the surroundings change. Those surroundings would have to be instanced though as well. Imagine having like 100 gigantic airships flying around in each zone, to big to even land properly.
So don't make them mounts, but instances that aren't bound to a zone, kind of.