Ishgard Restoration phase 3 feedback thread

• The way the event is designed promotes unhealthy behaviour. The fact that there is no timecap and it goes for 10 days. The goalposts are constantly moving away from you and the more aggressively you and the others around you sprint at the goalposts the faster it moves away. It is a vicious feedback loop. It is fine for short bursts, but 10 days is really exhausting.
  
• Bots seem to be prevalent during this event, which exacerbated the above problem.
  
• Hopefully, if they do more events like this in the future, they make the rewards attainable in a knowable/finite amount of time/score.
  For example, make the titles a reward for reaching score thresholds (e.g. 10k Beatus, 200k Saint) and have the leaderboard just be the order that people obtained Saint with no reward attached to it.
  
• This was the first time I had done expert recipes and it was really enjoyable. Would like to see more of this type of crafting at end-game, outside the event.
  
• Some servers were disproportionately harder to get Top 12 than other servers. Perhaps if ranking is tied to a reward, adjust the rank threshold based on server population or number of max level DoH/DoL.

Delete heat wave.

I like this difficulty level of crafting, but I don't like the time constraints bc it promotes playstyle that runs counter to how normally relaxing gathering / crafting is.

Green mats markedly more expensive this time around. I feel like in order to incentivize ppl gathering green mats in Diadem, timed/weather nodes must have a greater point value associated, because otherwise there is no reason to go gather them for DoL-rankers since they will impede progress by deviating from their current route.

I'd like to suggest some changes for future seasons of Ishgard Restoration. In my opinion, the event in its current form encourages unhealthy practices and behavior.

Gathering:

I achieved Saint status for Mining in Phase 3, and I had to do some incredibly unhealthy things to my body and sleep schedule to pull it off. Several of my friends going for Saint in both crafting and gathering did the same. For the sake of those who come after, and those who were just shy of Top 12 that will try again next season, please consider reducing the maximum amount of time you can spend on Ishgardian Restoration each day.

Example: You get one chance at Diadem each day. Give it your best 3 hour run. Plenty of time to farm materials for casual gatherers, and competitive gatherers are judged on how well they can gather items during a 3 hour window each day.

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Crafting:

Along the lines of the above suggestion, reduce the amount of time spent on restoration crafting each day. Impose a maximum limit of how many items the restoration effort will accept each day. Additionally, I feel there was too large a gap between the normal and expert synthesis options. Having other difficulty options in the middle would have been nice, and could be used to create a crafting progression during the event.

Example: You may turn in up to 10 items per day. The collectability value of the item is added to your score.

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Score and Ranking:

I would like to see Ishgard Restoration or similar events in the future use a rank-and-tier system, where players achieve both an overall rank from score, and a tier based on what kind of items they're turning in. Rank recognizes overall skill put forth during the competition, while Tier recognizes overall effort put forth during the competition. Items would need to be turned in each day, which eliminates item hoarding until the last day. Rewards are based on tier, rank is for bragging rights.

Example: After turning in a certain number of 1 Star crafts, you're prompted to turn in a 2 Star craft with a certain minimum collectability. Once you do that, you promote to the next tier and can turn in 2 Star crafts for score. Once you turn in enough 2 Star crafts, you may promote by turning in a 3 Star collectable. This continues up to Expert Recipies at the top tier.

Same thing can be done for gathering. Change unclouded nodes to be collectable-focused. After you turn in a certain number of 1 Star crafting materials, you are promoted to bring back a 2 Star item from an unclouded node with a certain minimum collectability. Once that's done, you can turn in 2 Star crafting materials for score. Enough of those, turn in a collectable 3 Star unclouded item to promote again... continuing up to artisanal materials.

At the end of the season, players are rewarded based on what tier they achieved during the competition, and all Diadem/item turn-in restrictions are removed afterward to allow for casual off-season crafting and gathering.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Diadem:

Heatwave, please never have this be default weather again, it is not good weather for the eyes and having it go to it for 10 Mims every 20 mins was horrible. Please make it clear skies or night time for next season I beg of you on this one.

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noo, i like heatwave , its much better than clear skies :C if anything i would prefer day-night cycle , bcs any brigth color killing my eyes since im doing diadem mostly in nights :/ but i guess everyone are having their preferences

My biggest complaint at the moment, is all the "I had to do this and its unhealthy" nonsense. You didn't HAVE to, you WANTED to.

big difference

- 10 days is far too long for the compatition, and also at the same time is not enough for the Firmiment building, which will now slow down in progress. Consider lowering the compatition time period and doing it more then once per phase. Right now it's people who are willing to push themselves to unhealthy degrees.

- Since you changed the title back to the first one, this round had a decent amount of people who already had Saint take spots from people who didn't, all because it's a seperate achievement from the last one. There's also a handful of people on multiple servers who are in top 12 multiple catagories. I don't think you should disallow people from competing because there's new items/titles one can get, but something should be there so new people aren't worried about losing spots to repeat winners.

- Gathering needs something big to fix it, it's even more dependent on pushing yourself to unhealthy degrees.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SinisterJoints

My biggest complaint at the moment, is all the "I had to do this and its unhealthy" nonsense. You didn't HAVE to, you WANTED to.

big difference

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You're right, and that's why by day 5 I stopped because I realized how it was affecting me and it's nothing more then a title. But some people will do anything for something they want, and in their mind it becomes a "I absolutely need to do this".

Got 11k points. Got some scrips while at it and called it a day.

Placed 5th in the top 12 on a crafter. Didn’t touch gathering.

Suggestions:

1) Have expert crafts expire after 12 hours to prevent people from hoarding/sandbagging the board. Someone came outta literal nowhere with 700k points last night.

2) Take note of people placing in the top 12 in more then 2 categories. (One gatherer/one crafter should make sense) There is someone on a different server that shall not be named that has placed in the top 12 (Usually in the top 5 no less) in FOUR categories. Such people need to be at least investigated and possibly have their ranking stripped as its pretty obvious they are cheating.

3) Allow us to turn in multiple items at a time, going through the cycle of turn ins 10-15 times is annoying.

4) Once someone has placed in the top 12 once they should be barred from placing again, if they do (because I know there are achievements and titles for getting points) the title and rewards should be given to rank 13 and so forth if there are multiple.

5) I see a lot of people suggesting limiting The amount turn ins, I heavily disagree with this as it’ll just lead to people fishing for perfect crafts from RNG all day and people with crafters delineations will have quite an advantage. On top of that if the stars align and multiple people get all perfects it’ll just lead to a mass tie for first and eliminate anyone turning in less then perfect crafts from ever placing. If anything the current way is the fairest, invest more time and the better you’ll do.

6) I think some sort of GM oversight should be put in place to investigate/eliminate extreme instances of people literally no lifing/botting. (Staying up and crafting for 4+ days, endlessly gathering, stuff like that.) that alone would free up the board.

Overall opinion

This was fun, the last day and previous weekend was particularly exhausting but I chose to do it. I wanted to win, I did do nothing but work towards it in my free time. Still functioned as a normal human being, work, ate, slept 7-8 hours, took breaks, except the last day which I figured people would try and mass sandbag the board so I took it off to be safe. I would highly recommend this content to someone who enjoys crafting and wants to be in a competitive environment, something this game lacks. Expert recipes are really fun once you get them down, however one time participating seriously and placing is enough for me. Maybe I’ll run gatherer for some gil next cycle. Thanks for the fun!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Diadem:

Bit controversial now but I feel like Diadem should have a 20hr a day limit on entry to prevent excessive Bots, harmful health habits. This timer should reset after the rankings have been snapshotted every day, it should of course only count time spent in Diadem itself and not the Firnament, and I think it should only be there as a restriction during the ranking period any other time I do not feel these issues be that prevalent with this particular content.


That most of what I wanted to give back, again if others could chime in better with the crafters it will be much appreciated as it was only second hand information.

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Haven't read the whole thread yet, and I did not even attempt to participate in the rankings and if I did it definitely was not intentional. But this to me is an insanely good suggestion overall.