Ishgard Restoration phase 3 feedback thread

I'm going to split it up into 4 sections, crafting, gathering, diadem and other.

Crafting:
Let's start with the section I didn't directly interact with this ranking period.

Leatherworker, whatever you did to Ltw crafts I don't think you should ever do it that awkward again, this is without a doubt most servers weakest crafter in terms of output, some servers you could be top 100 after a single craft, that is just bad. There will always be the hardest crafter to gets mats for but it seems Ltw ones were just so bad people avoided even trying right the way to the end.

Expert crafts are from my second-hand knowledge were high tuned but once got in the groove relatively easy to do, as I haven't actively tried if other people who are more dedicated crafters could enlighten me it would be much appreciated.


Gathering:
So I like having high caps for gatherers,I finally felt pushed since ARR to try to pentameld my gathering gear, I felt pushed to use gathering food, I liked this aspect and would like this to be a thing for new nodes in 5.4 and beyond.

Fsh can ignore perception and I think that is a problem, i think there should be a perception check with a fish that can only be HQ, obviously make it douable with gear available so that fsh can still make gathering check at same time but don't make a entire gathering job ignore a entire stat.

Fsh should get a use with the aether charge mechanic, however I think they're aether charge should go to allowing them to spend a charge to drastically increase chance of rarer fish being caught.

Fsh spiritbond for 490 gear is abysmal and I truly think that it should be looked at how much they can get.


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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.

Could you add a wind jump to the fire crystal area and the earth crystal area, it'll save a bit of time and it won't impact things too much.

Have the weather cycle where it is random out of the 4 for 1st pick, then the 3 that weren't used for 2nd pick, then the coin flip between last two and then the final one not yet shown last. This will make it that you will see a weather node at least twice per full 3hr lockout, which'll be great for future mat collectors, as right now you can go the full 3hrs without seeing a particular weather, which I feel is bad.


Other:

Bots, they exist, they have gone for rankings, they are not that rampant but they are there, please be as diligent as possible during the ranking season to remove and ban the offending account for the duration of the ranking period if proven to be Bot activity. This hampens a few people's enthusiasm to even compete, this should be a priority during the 10 day period to keep the competition as fair as possible.

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.

Actually pretty excellent feedback! Good thoughts. :)

They seriously need to add an expiry date to both the DoH and DoL turn-ins to prevent hoarding/sandbagging. It's really not fair that you can think you're on lock for top 12 up until the last day, then suddenly have some player of questionable legitimacy jump in with a point gain of 500K+ that's impossible to achieve in a single day.

Also, I think they needed to add some kind of daily/weekly incentive for accumulating skybuilder's points to help ensure the restoration progress goes along at a steady clip once the ranking period is over.

1. Unapproved items should expire. I soft hoarded a bit this season since I work 12 hour shifts, but I hate that it was possible. It makes daily leader-board updates meaningless. If it is midway through the week and the top 12 spots are all taken in a way that I have no chance, I'd like to know that I could tap out and be healthy the remainder of the time instead of doing this.

2. Personally, even if I did enjoy parts of this past week, I think there needs to be a hard look at the end-goal and the impact on health. The only ceiling in the top is time investment, and there is no cap. Winning seems to be a race to who can destroy their bodies the fastest - and for some servers it is a lot worse than the others. I LOVE competition. I do not love the unhealthy habits I put myself through to be able to compete.

3. Heat wave needs to go like yesterday.

I had some fun times interacting with great people during this event, but will not be putting my body through that again in the future - whether I make it or not. I will not be recommending this content to others.

I feel like there should be some sort of limit towards daily turn-ins.

Diadem: Maybe a daily time allotment, and/or limit on material submissions; Umbral materials would need to give a bonus to prevent easily hitting a hard limit.

Crafting: This one would be a littler trickier to limit, I think. Even if you restrict the amount of daily turn-ins, crafters would still be able to cherry pick which tier(collectability) of expert craft to turn-in and reach a hard limit. Could add something that rotates a bonus for specific craft turn-in?

I was at the sidelines experiencing others grind their life away for ranking titles, and I believe preventing this unhealthy level of grinding would be a real treat.

I gave up after 1 hour for both the previous and this ranking period.

Diadem is absolute garbage and completely contrary to how gathering works everywhere else in the game.

If you are going to hold a competition you have to be more serious about reigning in the bots is my only complaint. I see the broken bot I caught who was number one on their server for mining still is number one in the final rankings and was not removed. I hope they enjoy their "well earned" title.

I would suggest in the future to put in a quota to receive the titles instead of a competition. Then the amount could be set at something that does not promote players putting in potentially unhealthy amounts of time gathering or crafting to try to get the rewards. This would also make it so players who are cheating would not have the chance to prevent normal players from gaining the rewards. For this season I was lucky to have chosen to go with leatherworker so was able to hit top 12 without having to put in crazy amounts of time but some of the crafting professions had crazy levels they had to hit to compete and the gatherers had to deal with people using bots to get into the top 12 as well (I am guessing there were issues with that in crafting as well).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HakaseNyan

I feel like there should be some sort of limit towards daily turn-ins.

Diadem: Maybe a daily time allotment, and/or limit on material submissions; Umbral materials would need to give a bonus to prevent easily hitting a hard limit.

Crafting: This one would be a littler trickier to limit, I think. Even if you restrict the amount of daily turn-ins, crafters would still be able to cherry pick which tier(collectability) of expert craft to turn-in and reach a hard limit. Could add something that rotates a bonus for specific craft turn-in?

I was at the sidelines experiencing others grind their life away for ranking titles, and I believe preventing this unhealthy level of grinding would be a real treat.

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This. I would vote for that. Seems people like to hoard their collectibles until the last day and then snipe the leaderboards out of the blue. Might be tacticalwise not bad, but its bad sportmanship (also because they barely contribute to the mid-progress of the restoration with this method and/or trigger the fate spawn at oddly hours).

• 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.

I would request that the 10 day ranking period be done more often. Perhaps once a month? Having such a long time in between makes it pretty dead content when there isn't ranking going on. It would also give more people opportunity to earn the titles.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Soupa

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!

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I disagree with that, while that behaviours is unhealthy those peple clearly put in a lot of effort, the deserve to have the title after that, that said I do think something needs to be done to discourage this kind of behaviour in the future. I myself didn't stay up for 4 days straight but my schedule was completely taken up by gathering in the diadem, I managed to get 4th place in my server but I never want to do that again.

Also I agree the old one at a time turn in is annoying. If we could get something like the new collectables turn in window that would be amazing <3

I still think this just shouldn't be a competition, but the idea of limited turn ins has merit. Maybe something like the ixal crafting buffs? Two hours you craft for points, otherwise you can still craft for scrips and practice?

I missed top 12 this phase even though I spent many hours getting 431k points and placed a tragic #13.

- Ranking is server dependent. It takes many times more effort to rank in top 12 on Balmung.

- Title kept the same but achievement and title still linked. I don't need the title anymore but still want the limited time achievement. Title should be top 12 whereas achievement should be points dependent. That way, everyone who puts in the effort can get the achievement regardless of server while those who wants the title can still fight it out.

OR just have both be done by points and ranking just be a epeen thing.

- People getting top 12 in more than 1 category. Power to them but it denies a spot to people. In the end they have to /toss the title item.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Leatherworker, (snip snip snip cuz character limits) but it seems Ltw ones were just so bad people avoided even trying right the way to the end.

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Actually, I agree with some craft ingredients are weird. While I was chilling in Firmament in between my gatherings, I decided to pop into the shout chat, and someone was asking something along the lines of why rice is used when they aren't even a Culinarian. ./shrug

But other than that, Idk. It's weird. I would look at different server's crafters and gathering points. It is very interesting that on some servers, there arent much ALC crafters on the board with high numbers... Then there are other servers where LTW is actually very much cut throat and back to back. Then, theres another where the first 4 crafters dont have cut throat rank points either. I think it just depends on the players in the server really. But this is what I thought was interesting because I had the same mindset where if the mats are going to be tough to make a recipe, people wont go for it. Surely enough some servers proved wrong.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Fsh can ignore perception and I think that is a problem

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But it would be pointless if turning HQ fishes in doesn't grant more points. You would think it would, but it actually doesnt. NQ, HQ doesnt matter. Your Manta that you are turning in will be a flat rate of 221 points per. Why would we bother to put more of our time and efforts if it doesnt matter? And if you mean to ignore perception in ways of where you don't need it in your fish rotations... Have you tried the Stormchaser method without using Patience? It sucks but that is technically a way where Perception will come to play for us if the user does not have GP for Patience to utilize Mooch. (Not Mooch II)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Fsh should get a use with the aether charge mechanic

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This could actually drive the cost of mats down overall. IMO, I think thats a good thing because crafters do end up spending tons of their gil during the 10day ranking competition. I know that the mats for 5.3 has plummeted except for Umbral mats, but the previous season, mats were pretty expensive. Plus I think this will be fun for us Fishers since all we do is sit/stand and fish.

If they are going to implement aether charge to Fishers, might I also suggest that using aether charge as an incentive to reset the bot preventative, "The fishes has sense something amiss." notice? Obviously I'm not a bot, but that notice came out so many times already. I'm tired of going to a water hole nearby to cast my rod and then come back, only to find that I'm going have to do it AGAIN later on when im out of spots. If I'm going to leave to reset the timer, make it fun for us please. Instead of us casting to reset the bot preventative timer, can we just shoot some god damn giant rock that spews out even the smallest amount of mats?

Things seemed more competitive than last cycle.

I don't really have more feedback other than to also parrot that the lvl 80 crafts had some really odd 4th material requirements. Some of the crafters just being much more of a pain to source that 4th material than others.

I got rank 12 just barely made it and do have some feedback on this. I was able to compete due to my work being closed due to the west coast wild fires the smoke levels in town were unhealthy to go outside so my work stayed closed for 2 weeks. This left me the chance to stay home and craft. If I didn't randomly get this time off from work due to a natural disaster there is no way I would of got in the top 12.

I feel like the ranking system encourages unhealthy game play and incentivizes people to play FFXIV all day and do nothing but craft to place in the top 12 if you are going for it. For this week and a half of the ranking I only eat and slept otherwise I was crafting on FFXIV. Basically had to ignore what friends wanted to do tell them I have to craft during this time period.

Changes I would make would be:
-Have a daily ranking system and have it run for a month. You can get top 12, or top 100 title each day.
-People who have already got the title/achievement for the current phase will not be counted as part of the top 12 to give other people a chance to get it.

This would let more people get the title and you wouldn't have to spend all your time crafting for a whole week and a half.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Changes I would make would be:
-Have a daily ranking system and have it run for a month. You can get top 12, or top 100 title each day.
-People who have already got the title/achievement for the current phase will not be counted as part of the top 12 to give other people a chance to get it.

This would let more people get the title and you wouldn't have to spend all your time crafting for a whole week and a half.

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That would mean there could be 360 different people for top 12. At this rate you could just hand out the title and achievement to everyone for free.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Soupa

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.

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Why exactly do you want to forbid hoarding? Is it so you can possibly see if you can just chill and relax when people are far behind you point wise or if you have to do some more crafts when they are close to you? After all it is a competition and everyone should do the best he can/want to participate.

bots, sure they need to be banned. 20 hour lock out, not a bad suggestion, but meh. barring others from getting top 12, sure but they need to stop putting achievements with them per season. People collect achievements and if it a new acheivement every time even if it is just season 1 season 2 etc. People will go for it. SE doesn't understand achievements imo anyways. They think repetitive task with a redicolous number attached is what an achievement should be. People hoarding supplies, this one is just redicolous tho. No they shouldn't have a experation date on turn ins. This is a strategy, you can do it. It not against TOS. If you dont like it tough but either you slacked off cause you thought you had enough points and relaxed or you wouldn't have beat this person anyways if they just turned in. Either way that is on you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Malakii

... No they shouldn't have a experation date on turn ins. This is a strategy, you can do it. It not against TOS. If you dont like it tough but either you slacked off cause you thought you had enough points and relaxed or you wouldn't have beat this person anyways if they just turned in. Either way that is on you. ...

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I agree that it is a completely valid strategy to dissuade people above you on lower population servers from working harder. However, the side effect is that it makes the nightly point tally mostly meaningless. I made top 12, and as posted before I also soft-hoarded a bit.

My primary concern has nothing to do with the players, but rather the accuracy of the board. Considering the number of sleeping hours I had to give up to compete, I'd have loved better board accuracy to know if it was safe to go back to sleeping like a normal human or not. Pushing 18 hours to compete when you don't actually have to because of hidden leader-board entries is a really bad feeling. Even worse if you are sacrificing as much sleep and health as you can for a title that you absolutely will not get, but believe you can because the nightly reporting indicates it.


TLDR: Absolutely valid strategy that has some real benefits in a competitive environment, but a strat I feel would be best removed for the sake of nightly board accuracy as it pertains to health habits.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tymora

I missed top 12 this phase even though I spent many hours getting 431k points and placed a tragic #13.

- Ranking is server dependent. It takes many times more effort to rank in top 12 on Balmung.

- Title kept the same but achievement and title still linked. I don't need the title anymore but still want the limited time achievement. Title should be top 12 whereas achievement should be points dependent. That way, everyone who puts in the effort can get the achievement regardless of server while those who wants the title can still fight it out.

OR just have both be done by points and ranking just be a epeen thing.

- People getting top 12 in more than 1 category. Power to them but it denies a spot to people. In the end they have to /toss the title item.

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I felt bad for you Tymora. Two snipes did you in, the largest was the 740K one out of nowhere. The other 310K one was "expected", having seen how they scored last season.

I agree here, *two* titles in a season should be a non-starter. Force a crafter to disclose when they start by getting a ticket (akin to the Aether Compas or Book of Netherfire), which unlocks *that* singular job for the competition. Perhaps a special soul crystal would be a fun touch... You can change it, but your score gets reset in the other job for the season. I know what the top 12 go through, two of them can't be healthy as it is... If possible, crafts should also expire, which gets rid of the snips and helps in firmament progression.

I believe the "Saint" title should be available to those who submit a certain amount lifetime.

This was the first time I've done this and while I was able to make top 12 it didn't really feel like I accomplished anything and the reward doesn't match up with the time investment. Ideally I would like something that cuts down on the time investment and depends more on a persons skill. I would make it some people can do 50 crafts a day and your points are totaled as soon as you complete the craft. That way there is no hoarding and each craft means more, you get your 50 crafts and that's it, you wouldn't get to craft 100 and turn in your best 50.

Please have the mats collected describe for which level the craft is used. I'm not talking about when they're about to be gathered. It's after they're gathered and stay in your inventory: it does not show for what level craft they're used.

Also, could use a "favorite" toggle to highlight the mat your favor upon gathering.


Oh and yes, please, please, PLEASE do away with sustained heatwave.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tymora

- Ranking is server dependent. It takes many times more effort to rank in top 12 on Balmung.

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Totally.
And I have an excellent example for that.

I couldn't get to top 12 1rst season as Miner, gave up because it was too draining to gather so much each day.
I wanted the Saint title this season as well, but felt I couldn't have the energy to hold that long (10 days is tiresome).

Tuesday this week, I noticed there was not a high competition for Blacksmith (on Moogle).
So I literally started Tuesday, crafted as much as I could, and I made it (ranked 10th).

So I'll get the Saint title. I did some effort, sure, but only 3 days out of 10, which is something you couldn't even think of on other servers.

It shows how this ranking system is flawed.

I wonder if you shouldn't register beforehand for one and only job, and on any server of your data center.
Of course, you could change the job you compete for whenever you want, but it'll cancel your old ranking.

The idea of registering in any server you want is to spread the player so that there are no advantaged servers to gain the title compare to others.
Sure, I wouldn't have got mine this way, but it looks more fair at least

I feel bad for those who are putting so much time and effort for that.
Sure it's a competition, but let's be honest, we don't all start at the same level.

I think anyone who participate to some degree should be rewarded with something more than just a title (nothing else unique of course, but some materia, in game minions, in game glamour gear, dyes) => for example, if you're top 100, you'll get the new mount, minion and glamour set 5.31 introcued with scripts and the mini game.
Because it really favored those who have max free time for the next 10 days. (especially for top 12 I mean). It's not about having your crafter max meld, or making expert recipes max quality. And as I said, server population are really different.

10 days in a row feels a bit too much by the way.

There should be more mini-season whitin a month.

And the title shouldn't be tied to an achievment.
I know dev rethought the way it should run in the process, but their very first idea imo was the best. Only 2 uniques title through several season. If you already have it, you shouldn't have to compete for the next season.
Places already are super limited, let more people compete.

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Originally Posted by ACE135

Why exactly do you want to forbid hoarding? Is it so you can possibly see if you can just chill and relax when people are far behind you point wise or if you have to do some more crafts when they are close to you? After all it is a competition and everyone should do the best he can/want to participate.

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Because hoarding defeats the point of updating the board at all. It’s not a true representation of what’s happening, might as well not even update it and just report rankings at the end.

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Originally Posted by ACE135

Why exactly do you want to forbid hoarding? Is it so you can possibly see if you can just chill and relax when people are far behind you point wise or if you have to do some more crafts when they are close to you? After all it is a competition and everyone should do the best he can/want to participate.

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I guess the simplest way to put it is how can we compete against things we can't see?

Your stance comes from the point of view for folks who are at the top or near the top of their board or have a good distance from other competitors. For folks who are in the middle of the pack and not separated by fat point margins we are judging things by folks who are similar to us. Seeing the people around me made me push, kept me competitive, because I thought I had a chance. I laid awake at night worrying if that wasn't true, if I was doing this for nothing because people I couldn't see would come out of nowhere and kick me off the board.

If I'm doing well, I want to know this is the pace to keep up. If I'm doing okay I want to look for little ways to improve, to brew that pot of coffee and get three hours instead of four or see if I can't change up cordials to yield better results. If I'm getting absolutely obliterated I want to know so that I can gracefully back out and give my melds and how I'm doing things a harder look at so that I can hopefully be competitive next time. I don't want to think I'm doing well, think I have a chance, and wake up to find out that I got kicked off the board because six people held their turn ins till the last moment and put up high point totals I had no hope of competing with because I didn't know I was doing so poorly. I have no chance to improve if I don't know I need to.

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Originally Posted by VeganPete

Ideally I would like something that cuts down on the time investment and depends more on a persons skill. I would make it some people can do 50 crafts a day and your points are totaled as soon as you complete the craft. That way there is no hoarding and each craft means more, you get your 50 crafts and that's it, you wouldn't get to craft 100 and turn in your best 50.

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There are two problems with this:

1) If it's a "first" 50 crafts, this is subject to huge swing by RNG. I know I had several crafts this season which hit max without even using Byregot's. I hear the argument, RNG averages out. Imagining it does over a relatively small sample of 500, it also ties with the next problem.

2) If it's a "best" 50 crafts, crafters are just going to craft 50 perfects, and there will be a giant first-place tie. In the cast of RNG average, in a perfect world, it would be tied as well.

Limiting it isn't going to do what anyone needs, not in this manner. Eliminating hoarding makes it more visible, you can choose whether or not you're going to keep up with a false sense of security.

It's pretty clear that barring certain cases, they aren't going to remove botters from the rankings. I'm sure I'm not the only player who saw the MIN/BTN whose bot bugged, causing them to change jobs repeatedly at the Diadem entrance.

And while uncommon, hoarders can be a problem. Sure it's a strategy meant to throw off other players from knowing your true score, but it must be quite soulcrushing if you were in 12th place. You worked hard to get to seemingly get your spot, only to find out at 6AM (after the Lodestone crashed for an hour) that you were kicked out.

I'd like to propose any of the following possible changes:

• Future events can be based on thresholds rather than who has the highest scores. For example, reach 500k points to earn Saint. If below 500k, earn Beatus. Players that meet 500k will have their names displayed on the website, the names being sorted by time and date of when they reach the goal.
  
  That 500k can be made difficult to attain so only the most dedicated players can reach that number by the end of the event. Players can compete by how fast they can get listed on the website, and at the same time other players can craft/gather at their own pace and still receive a reward if they put in the effort.

• The achievement/title should not be unique per season. Even though the titles have the same name as last season, they are still counted as new achievements in-game. This meant that the top 12 of last season can still participate and receive duplicates of the same title/achievement if they ranked top 12 again.