Ishgard Restoration Finished

Did you get a rank? Did you have fun?

I finished 5th but didn’t need so many points this time. I also got most of what I wanted from the scripts and Kupo thing. I really like it despite some flaws in the ranking system.

Ranking is over. Restoration is only over on a few servers. Two last time I checked.

grats on getting what you wanted anyway.

I was able to nab first place.

This was a fantastic and unique experience and I never want to do anything like it again.

I thought it was okay as a one off. On one hand it made crafting more accessible, but on the other hand it also showed just how much of a second job actually doing crafting is in this game and that is after making it more accessible via Ishgard restoration plus simplifying all the controls down. Regardless, congratulations to everyone who placed in the top 5.

I did not like how Ishgard competitions were not really competitions: they were more like how long could someone slave away at a rotation for hours while being fed crafting supplies through an IV in a hospital bed. Personally I prefer things that have lower difficulty and more variety in activities. Like maybe craft something, swap to combat job to kill a monster that spawns, swap to gatherer to harvest, swap back to crafter to quickly craft some items that have fairly low difficulty to make, go scour the area again to find the next mark, etc. Just having the entire thing basically turn into a number grinding game that was completely overmeld gear locked with such a banal, repetitious exercise was anything but interesting.

As someone with all the crafters and gatherers at max level before that thus not needing it to level I was often done after one day...its simply Rowena turn in with another paint and sometimes you had a fate. So it was mostly disappointing for me.

The competition was badly done and only either for those that lived quite unhealthy a couple of days or bots. Those with less time never stood a chance from the start. I also had thought (before the first part) that we constantly would have new pvp seasons with people already getting the top 12 title not having a way to participate again..also maybe with a max amount of points you could make each day..instead it was only once for each new phase and lasted too long for something that had no restrictions on points.

So at the end I hope they dont ever do that again...lets get another Doma restoration please where it was without any pvp and tied down to your personal pace...with that you would truly be able to see it change and not have the finished product if you did not play it at that time..

The positive part were the quests. They were a nice mix of happyness and sadness.

I liked Doma too but i definetly think a hub like this has a place.

I was lucky in my rank in that this time around we needed far less points. My fifth WVR wouldn’t have come top 12 in any previous season or in the most hotly contested jobs this time around. So I lived a mostly healthy life doing it although it did get rather boring.

But people in the diadem going round and round in circles for two weeks on minimal sleep, and getting beaten by bots anyway.. that’s a big no.

I think the ‘ranking period’ definetly drives participation, but I’d personally prefer a set goal to make in this time rather than vs others. I didn’t want to push anyone into 13th and I didn’t want to put it tons of effort and miss out. So ‘participated in season 1’ and ‘scored 200,000 points in season 1’ would be better idea imo.

Asides from the rankings I’ve had tons of fun, and would definetly use it to level if they did a 80-90 one.

It’s been nice to go back to Ishgard too and the quests part of it have been lovely. The music/theming and everything was top notch.

I think the crafting fates were great too and would love to see more of these.

I didn't hate it but I hope they don't keep doing crafting/gathering rankings every expansion from now on.

Also it'd be cool if they figured out RNG someday, so first place kupo ticket prizes don't range from 2k to 2 million. This round was the worst, I constantly felt like "I don't even care what I get, just give me the next ticket". Half the time the second prize was a more valuable item than first place.

Yeah I ranked 11th on my server for LTW, my feelings are a bit conflicted. Some parts I enjoyed, others...not so much.

I enjoyed the stories and seeing the Firmament gradually come together, but the ranking system shouldn't have even existed.

Having a competition that demands nothing but sheer time from its participants is just begging for cheaters to abuse it, and abuse it they did. Seemingly no one actually got banned this time around because they updated the DoL bots so they wouldn't get stuck anymore.

It would've been more fair for everyone to just let anyone who got a certain amount of points within a Firmament "season" to get the Saint title. 500K for Saint and maybe like 100K for Beata would've reasonable IMO, and it likely would've encouraged greater participation overall. The actual process of gaining points could've been improved, as well; such as by having a higher collectability cap on expert recipes and having more gathering options like aetherial reduction/ephemeral nodes to make the DoL grind more varied.

I do think they could have varied up the process a bit for gathering, just by increasing the points for the weather nodes/fish. One of the more ridiculous aspects of all three rankings is that optimal point gain actually required you to ignore the weather nodes and fish altogether and just stick to one route/fishing spot and never deviate no matter what. I still don't understand why weather nodes/fish are worth such a small amount of points. They should be worth HUGE points that strongly encourage people to go after them when the weather is up. Fishing had all the makings of an interesting, varied experience, but they insisted on making 1 fish the go to fish so that instead of hopping from island to island as the weather changed you just sat in one spot all day and focused on that one fish. I would have liked to see something like "Aspected" artisanal fish during the weathers. Like, during Dust Storms, you would go the Blustery Cloudtop to fish for the weather fish Marrella, but the weather would also change the Sweatfish to Aspected Sweatfish that are worth double the points.

It was fun for a while. I got the lesser title in the first ranking season. After that the whole thing just felt like a grind and I didn't bother anymore. I kinda want the achievement mount but it's just too much work so I doubt I'll ever get it.

The ranking system really needs a do-over. Maybe only the first X amount of turn-ins count towards the ranking per day, so it would favor skilled crafters making better items over people going into obsession mode and cranking out piles and piles and piles of stuff (not to mention taking bots out of the equation)? I dunno.

I do like the story parts, and I hope they do more in the future (maybe we can rebuild Ala Mhigo next). But the ranking system sucked.

As of now, 13 JP servers have finished Ishgard Restoration.

0 for NA servers.

I'm not a fan as to how the ranking system was handled. It encourages unhealthy practices if you're serious about competing for a top spot and there isn't anything particularly challenging about the gathering aspect - it's just tedious and time consuming. Since it's temporary content in the first place, it might as well have been developed with the ability for people to reach a certain target if they wanted to snag a title. It's a server wide contribution effort, at any rate - and there's competitors who have stated that now they've gotten a ranking they're not bothering with it any longer, so servers who have yet to finish rebuilding Ishgard are lagging behind due to the sudden drop off of crafters contributing.

yes like we on shiva are only at lv 20 now... itll take weeks...

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Originally Posted by MoonKibbles

As of now, 13 JP servers have finished Ishgard Restoration.

0 for NA servers.

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And here's one of my problems with the system. Everyone and their cousin was in the Firmiment during the 10 days of the competition, and then now it's going to die out. Last time it took an obscene amount of time for my server to finish, even though we have a pretty big base of crafters and gatherers, becuase most already have the rewards and what they want, and have better ways of making gil.

Yes I’m sorry I worded it badly.. I mean the ranking is over and it’s all coming to a close.

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Originally Posted by Espritduo

I do think they could have varied up the process a bit for gathering, just by increasing the points for the weather nodes/fish. One of the more ridiculous aspects of all three rankings is that optimal point gain actually required you to ignore the weather nodes and fish altogether and just stick to one route/fishing spot and never deviate no matter what. I still don't understand why weather nodes/fish are worth such a small amount of points. They should be worth HUGE points that strongly encourage people to go after them when the weather is up. Fishing had all the makings of an interesting, varied experience, but they insisted on making 1 fish the go to fish so that instead of hopping from island to island as the weather changed you just sat in one spot all day and focused on that one fish. I would have liked to see something like "Aspected" artisanal fish during the weathers. Like, during Dust Storms, you would go the Blustery Cloudtop to fish for the weather fish Marrella, but the weather would also change the Sweatfish to Aspected Sweatfish that are worth double the points.

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This is the kinda feedback they need rather than don’t do this again in my opinion. I was very shocked when I found out the best way to do botany was to pick 7 nodes then go back to the first one again or something similar.

I was very interested in fishing but chose weaver instead. I don’t think I would have liked to just stay on one spot aiming for one fish.

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Originally Posted by MoonKibbles

As of now, 13 JP servers have finished Ishgard Restoration.

0 for NA servers.

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Not a surprise, most JP servers seem to always have queues to get in and very little times without that happening. NA servers...there's a lot of downtime with fewer players. Comparing the two region servers is like comparing Las Vegas to Atlanta. Both are busy, but only one of them has a "closing time" for business.

I got rank 22 on CUL and I'm... mostly ok with that. I figured out expert recipes too late and by then there was no way I would have gotten top 12 without serious no-lifing or spending a couple of millions on mats.

I like the Restoration because it's something I can hop in, do a few crafts, hop back out; Diadem, though, I feel like I'm not doing it right if I'm not there for at least an hour and a half, so that takes some enjoyment out of it.

I wasn’t able to devote a lot of time into it so I didn’t even try to rush for rankings but for leveling up it’s pretty nice. It’s especially nice for my lower level crafters I wasn’t really giving any attention.

JP likes to get things done. NA is more like once the incentive is gone, then it's just eh whateves.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

JP likes to get things done. NA is more like once the incentive is gone, then it's just eh whateves.

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Yeah I used it to cap my crafters. I go back in when they add new rewards, and then forget about it.

I almost wish that the season went on for just a few more days because the second it ended everyone just dropped from the restoration and progress has slowed to a snail's pace. Which hurts knowing how close to finishing we are. I get that people go all out during the ranking period and they probably get burned out, but it's clear that it was the most incentivizing thing for this last phase.
If they ever hold a restoration event like this in the future, they maybe shouldn't stretch it out over the course of four phases like this, because I feel like so many people were burned out by this point. The rewards also felt rather lacking, and I think they need to adjust the Kupo Cards to require 3 instead of 5 stamps or something, because one can spend hours upon hours gathering and crafting only to wind up with junk in a matter of seconds.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Not a surprise, most JP servers seem to always have queues to get in and very little times without that happening. NA servers...there's a lot of downtime with fewer players. Comparing the two region servers is like comparing Las Vegas to Atlanta. Both are busy, but only one of them has a "closing time" for business.

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If only that was true. I know all too well that JP servers only have queues during peak hours (Hint: I'm from Chocobo). We just have more players interested in crafting, that's all.

Quick everyone, place your bets on how many of this tier's Saints end up getting banned for botting.

None? Like that one bot fc on Ragnarok... that like 7 weaver with close to the same name lol...

My thoughts on it are pretty similar to when it was released which was:

• I think it's interesting to get the community involved with progress of a zone but I hope next time they link the maximal progression to the community but the actual stage of progression to the player's own journey. In general I like seeing things change over time, and more specifically because of 'my' actions, so of course I've the bias to the later but in general I hope to see them continue the content.
• I would like to see the content applied to something more either built into the general player experience or the story in general, like the next hub space, or important to the MSQ- and particularly not just something to be done after other stuff. Say for example I might get to this long destroyed impoverished village, as completing MSQ and side quests the village improves, side quests being just normal side quests but also some mechanics relating to certain number of leve's completed and or FATE level outside, and then custom deliveries, etc, etc, built and wound up upon itself such that it feels like a core experience rather than a system set off to the side. In that example it might start ugly but by the end perhaps its like that one cute Zelda mountain village, or even better, new features unlocked as you go along (of course). Naturally some really clever placement of objects and or 'some' phasing of players might be needed (depends on what they do, at worse case it might be a personal instance but I think they could get some clever mixing going on - you wouldn't want a hub to be purely solo or phased too aggressively).
• The ranking system, and any ranking system like it (like some of PvP's), will and always will encourage botting and or absolutely extreme levels of "no life-ing". I think it would be better to try and form other systems that avoid this design; although, I understand that sometimes people really do like having the opportunity to no life it.. Like some people just love insane levels of grind "I remember when we had to grind for 20 hours in one spot killing the same monster over and over to level up once, and that was good"...
• Some better overflow mechanics for FATEs would be nice, like if the zone is full then have some FATE tasks in Ishgard itself or on the outskirt zones - in this way a server would have to fill like 4 zones. Also this way you might have it so the more people involved the better (like each FATE's end result is tallied and then the reward is given out to everyone who participated, so the more people the higher everyone's reward is - community welcomed not "oh god I hope not too many people are in today"). Multi-zone concept may also provide an easy means for multiple types of FATE content allowing multiple types of players to enjoy it (well you could have a hamlet defense / FFXI besieged like event to tie it all into one space - but some of the point was to ensure the zones don't become so packed you can't join, context determines some of what makes easy of course).
• Story, some mechanics, ui, etc, in a general sense I thought it was a cute endeavor and nice that they were trying something a bit different. Hopefully the next one will do even better, or some other idea might take advantage of some of the things they learned here, with their next concept (and of course for my selfish desires to be part of it, but.. of course lol).

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Originally Posted by BelegErkhten

Quick everyone, place your bets on how many of this tier's Saints end up getting banned for botting.

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The numbers were very low on my server and presumably elsewhere too, at least in comparison to previous seasons.

There was one or two that are very suspicious in the hand side of thing, and apparently it’s worse in the diadem, but generally most of the players seem to be genuine on mine.