All the normal servers will be done by tomorrow. It's not that big of a difference.
The main point of my disappointment is that these three stages are all the content they gave us.
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Well... I mean it would be nice if the fates kept on, like a random "Firewood is needed to refuel the Braziers" but this is just stage one to get us used to a new gamestyle. We honestly don't know what the next section will take. I understand it's hard to be optimistic with regards to the modern gaming industry, goodness knows I refuse to get my hopes up that SE will see the error of their ways and give us instanced personal housing that can be expanded. Still, in this case it might be better to wait and see the next stage.
Hard to say for sure. Honestly the whole thing is a bit of a mess. Although I didn't miss out on any of the stages, as unspectacular as they were, I'm sad a lot of people missed out on them.
Maybe something like:
Week 1: A lengthy turn in phase
Week 2: Recurring FATEs, all week long, so people don't miss out.
Then, as someone suggested earlier in the thread, on Week 3 you could get a cutscene upon entering the zone and be greeted with the changes. Then the cycle could repeat.
I'm sure there are plenty of ways they could have handled this whole mess better.
FATEs seem like they could have easily been far more recurring and paced out. Perhaps even requiring some kind of token to participate, OR give a debuff upon completion that stops people from participating again for [some period longer than the expected time between FATEs] to guarantee that more people can join in at least once.
I also would have liked to see more calculated quotas than "blindly craft an infinite amount of whatever you feel like" - perhaps something like a levequest system where you report to the counter and choose which of the current requests you can fulfil, with a limit on how many you can take. Gatherers would be assigned to travel out and get supplies, crafters would be given a stack of "specific item materials" like you use for custom deliveries. The Namazu tribe quests showed that they can use generic items and variable dialogue to imply that you're crafting something relevant to your current class.
I wanted to contribute but the sheer amount of expected work was overwhelming. What should I do? What's efficient? I've spent X hours watching my character craft the same item a hundred times; when will it end?
Letting people craft and hand in infinitely makes me feel like I'm not contributing enough if I don't do the same. In my case that's demotivated me; for others it's going to drive them to work equally hard and fast to feel like they've done their share, driving the content to be done at top speed whether we actually enjoy doing it this way or not.
Putting the brakes on it and encouraging more people to give a smaller amount would help the "community feel" they seem to be after. "Contribute to this unfathomably deep stockpile" is daunting but "we need a person to collect 100 logs" is doable. Perhaps even a choice of 100 or 500 or 1000, with or without scaling the rewards so you get a bonus for a bigger contributions.
The lack of a "big picture" of the planned works doesn't help either. Would people have rushed the same way if they knew there were only three stages to complete?
Small servers is going to suffer from lost of world visit now. I know gauge on mine sure going a lot slower and only see third people crafting inside now than when had world visit. Not sure if was such a good plan to end it for restoration. Fates to it should been quests like the Doman Enclave was when reached max.
I'm not picking a fight but you keep talking about all this suffering as if the next patch will drop tomorrow. Is there some hidden bit of info as to why everyone wants to be done with this content so soon? I've been grinding it out on Marlboro on my other character and as far as I see not everyone stays in there to craft. A lot of us are going out to gather and then craft somewhere outside of the place. There's no reason craft inside or at least I always go back to craft at my house and then turn in stuff, gather, repeat I don't understand the big rush.
If this is solely on a world first basis, you may be right. But you have just about 3 months till 5.2, which is the earliest that the next stage of Restoration will be made available (I think they may release it in 5.21 myself). The small servers have time to catch up.
Did every say how many stages there is. I heard each stage takes double what one before it took. I know at stage 3 after turning in 500 collectables I didn't even see gauge budge any. Todays now and gauge is still less than 50%