I dont think ishgard restoration was thought out very well...

[Alleo]

The game needs more things which every player won't have not less.

Then put it behind true work and not something that is so unhealthy and boring. Its just a pure grind, nothing more. I mean we could have achivements that are like: Hit this iron ore 1 million times and not many might have had them but that would not make the achievement more special.

Huge mindless grinds should stay in F2P games.

About housing zone: Well if SE truly have wanted it they could have made Ishgard the very first instanced housing zone. With that anyone that puts in the work to help Ishgard by doing their own indiviual built up will get their instanced house at the end, together with a nice little cutscene. But of course it had to be another ward just like the rest..

[Awha]

Honestly locking houses for a period of time to those who took part would be nice. MMo's should have content that is locked to certain players. Exclusive content is nice to have at times. This is from someone that did not take part and would love a house in Ishgard.

[LaylaTsarra]

But of course it had to be another ward just like the rest..

We don't really know that but the chances are you're right it will be just more of the same.

[Kuroka]

Then put it behind true work and not something that is so unhealthy and boring. Its just a pure grind, nothing more. I mean we could have achivements that are like: Hit this iron ore 1 million times and not many might have had them but that would not make the achievement more special.

Huge mindless grinds should stay in F2P games.

About housing zone: Well if SE truly have wanted it they could have made Ishgard the very first instanced housing zone. With that anyone that puts in the work to help Ishgard by doing their own indiviual built up will get their instanced house at the end, together with a nice little cutscene. But of course it had to be another ward just like the rest..

Some grind is ok, really, but that one... lol. I had Fc mates reching the top 11, just barely but still... the amount of time they crafted, were online basically all day... even Eureka wasnt as bad.

Its such a waste, we should just get an instanced house there, with all the NPC living next to us.

But Imo the competition should have never been this open, spam crafting 24/7 thing - they shouldve used tiers of rewards, so each rank is capped - the first tier then may go up to 5000000 points if your ego needs that lol.

[Barraind]

many MMOs including this one and the other top one, WoW, do exactly what I said

Its not handled well in any game that does it.

You either end up with the GW2 system, where things just work in cycles and outside your personal housing zone, where you get to make 6? choices that matter, everything you do is undone by the environment within an hour, or you get something like ESO where theres multiple levels of phasing on multiple portions of every zone, and you walk into a far-flung village to use a guild trader only to realize you have to do a full quest line to kill all the red named npc's in the town until it phases five times into the actually usable version of that town where other people exist and you go WHY DOES THIS WORK LIKE THIS?!?!?!

Theres very little you can actually affect in an MMO without using absurd levels of phasing (14 uses that sparingly to add/remove/move NPC's), which has its own issues in how its presented to the playerbase and how you have to separate portions of the community into what is essentially instanced phases.

The best way to do it in MMO's IS restoration / idylshire style content. You run it for a year or two, players do the content, then at the end, you have the final step and thats the version everyone sees going forward. The next expansion then has its own one or two pieces of over-arching server-wide content thats relevant while that expansion is going, it gets done, and from there on, its in its last step. It gives the server community a measurable, completable goal, and players can participate or not if they want, and it gives the server an overall meta-goal for the expansion / part of the expansion. 14 has done it to where you dont actually miss out on anything other than the content, and restoration "content" is 3 fates a phase where you cant actually see anything anyway, because the game cannot draw that many characters at once, where you just mash the 'interact with nearest' button.

[Shougun]

Its not handled well in any game that does it.

You either end up with the GW2 system, where things just work in cycles and outside your personal housing zone, where you get to make 6? choices that matter, everything you do is undone by the environment within an hour, or you get something like ESO where theres multiple levels of phasing on multiple portions of every zone, and you walk into a far-flung village to use a guild trader only to realize you have to do a full quest line to kill all the red named npc's in the town until it phases five times into the actually usable version of that town where other people exist and you go WHY DOES THIS WORK LIKE THIS?!?!?!

Theres very little you can actually affect in an MMO without using absurd levels of phasing (14 uses that sparingly to add/remove/move NPC's), which has its own issues in how its presented to the playerbase and how you have to separate portions of the community into what is essentially instanced phases.

The best way to do it in MMO's IS restoration / idylshire style content. You run it for a year or two, players do the content, then at the end, you have the final step and thats the version everyone sees going forward. The next expansion then has its own one or two pieces of over-arching server-wide content thats relevant while that expansion is going, it gets done, and from there on, its in its last step. It gives the server community a measurable, completable goal, and players can participate or not if they want, and it gives the server an overall meta-goal for the expansion / part of the expansion. 14 has done it to where you dont actually miss out on anything other than the content, and restoration "content" is 3 fates a phase where you cant actually see anything anyway, because the game cannot draw that many characters at once.

Maybe they could improve it, but the point was to show that what I like is exactly the type of MMO I play- as you pointed out another MMO that does it too. That the majority of content of (permanent) change is done through player's actions and not through the community, which makes sense for games that follow the theme park trend. Theme parks being something you buy a ticket and theoretically get access to all the content it has to offer (with there occasionally being rides shutdown, for whatever reason, but for the most part not).

Also disagree on the best example being macro Idylshire, I would have preferred it followed quests than follow a fixed clock (which wasn't really even community based, more time gated). I was there as it grew so it was in essence for myself it might have felt through quests, but if I came at a later time it would have been more exciting, imo, to watch that content grow as I did it rather than it always have been built up. Ishgard changes based on the community which makes it a bit special in comparison to Idyl. I liked that it changed, and I liked that I get to watch it, I didn't really like that it did it by itself but it was okay because I was there along with it, I would have preferred it over nothing (as it was), but I would have preferred it's changes driven by my actions specifically over by itself (like beast tribes). I made a note on macro Idylshire because technically there is the two courier quests there that change on a personal level.

Theme park, ticket, content.

I like this structure, hence I play the game that largely represents this structure (just like WoW and most other top MMOs do). I don't mind occasional living world examples, because the game needs to diversify and not be the same thing 24/7, but I have a huge bias to it being theme park and a living world to 'my existence' rather than someone else's- hence why I play.. a theme park mmo where I specifically am the hero and the whole game's existence (story) revolves around my character. Sandbox and other more hardcore, non-theme park, mmos can be great places to show living world that exists outside the player and one would expect a more prevalent approach to that sort of content there. Can certainly change the game to be less theme-park based in some aspects too, if people want, but that's a change I was voicing an opinion against (in such a way that it wasn't a blanket ban but a desire to keep majority personal).

Am I making an argument that no permanent community living world content should exist? No, never said it should never exist (in fact I said it should exist, just I don't want it to be the main type of change as I don't prefer it, and it's currently not the main type of change either, so I'm not even asking for a change in the game if anything I'm asking for any change to be tempered and less extreme)- that I disagree that restoring Ishgard or Idelyshire's autopilot growth is more compelling or interesting than having it bound to my actions specifically, and that I will consistently choose to have it be theme park based if given the opportunity. The fact I was asking for a tempered and measured response is also key why in that post you quoted part of it I was frustrated (annoyed?), as they were suggesting I play another game if I want it to be different when in reality the game is doing what I want and I wasn't asking for a change (don't want to remove Ishgard, don't want to entirely stop new projects from existing, but I don't want the proportional focus to change at all, as I've a bias that is currently majority supported and I'd hope it continues to be).

You might have read my post first post that started this chain of comments in summary like: "Okay.. I get we should try new things sometimes, I'm glad they do that, but hopefully don't go too crazy on this permanent community change concept.. because.. I liked that the majority was this certain personal way and if anything I would be excited if that was to be improved on". Like we've already had the hub cities change over time, usually each expansion has one thing that will change through the life of the expansion (seems Ishgard be this one)- that's how it's been since ever.

While I personally would prefer all those be driven by quest progression, and other personal mechanics like courier quests or tribe events, I've never really rallied against them (actually I've promoted them early on, back in the beginning of 2.0); because it's just a different thing and sometimes it's good to have something different. However, I don't want them to rate propagate/become that common (as they are they're pretty much exclusively one thing per expansion, so it's not common and that's how I'd like it to stay- if they change it to personal I'd be happier but I'm not too concerned about a little bit here and there that's different). If change is to be common I would hope it be strictly bound to each player's experience, with seldom items being community / time based (which I've historically also commented for and thanked SE for, like for the beast tribes).

That the game is already a theme park mmo and so no one should be saying "go play another game" when what is desired is exactly what the majority of the content is delivered to them (as is the case with most theme park mmos). This is also why in my first post here I used keyword like counter weight, to disagree with the person on preference but also not to tell them they're wrong for wanting something different- as they're allowed and encouraged to do, that I wanted to act as a . . . "counter weight" and voice that I think it's fine it exists but I hope this style of content doesn't propagate into other content pieces too often, or that at least they might consider coming up with a hybrid concept (when possible) as suggested in that first post.

Mind you that adding more community based content over personal would be a change, which again goes back to how I feel about that post that said to go else where if I didn't like what the game mostly does already- quite frustrating and honestly a bit bewildering as it reads as like "even though you like what the game is doing currently I'm going to tell you to leave the game because you don't like it (even though I do, and said I think it's good they try different stuff), and even though you don't want the game to change and were simply counter balancing a comment on how someone felt phases/layers were less natural (not as good) than permanent world changes (which suggest we should have more content like that), I'm going to tell you that you don't get to ask for it to change even though you weren't asking for anything to change and were just sharing bias that layers/phasing was actually nice and desirable (to me, like what we have already with MSQ, Beast, and Courier)". Feels like a severe lack of reading or at least understanding the nuance of my post (that I think it's fine this content exists, but I think layers/phasing feels good), and why it's not solid advice in the slightest- capturing and understanding none of my points in a rebuttal that says "go play what you like then" - when I'm doing just that. Which isn't even going on how their point on serving everyone equally, the reason why they said I should play an sRPG, would be more equal if done through phased/layered systems rather than a system that wont be applied equally based on availability / time you join the game (which isn't argument that the system can't exist, but it certainly isn't the most potentially equal), and never mind that I feel a forum made for feedback it's silly to suggest people can't ask for changes and rather should just move onto a different game, even though I wasn't really, and I was really just propping up phased/layered content as 'good content' and a good thing for theme park games- yet as I mentioned in that post I thought it was good they try different things for different people.

What the game is currently is what I prefer, I don't want nor am interested in a full stop ban on permanent community projects (not interested in Ultimate content either but also don't think it should be stopped too, the game should be able at least somewhat support a broad range of interests), but I am far more interested in the personal and will extremely consistently prefer the game maintain and enhance the relationship it already has with change (like with more quests that have personal changes, based on you the player- bigger changes too, I enjoy the phasing concept so long as it doesn't become so difficult to work around that it kills multiplayer on demand, which I know WoW had issues with originally).

[MistakeNot]

They at least could have made it so that the FATEs still happen, so even if the overall progress is already finished, new people can still participate in all the content. If they still accept contributions, why not have FATEs as well?

How could the FATEs happen when the progress bar no longer progresses? The FATEs happened at the end of each phase, and finishing the FATEs was what made the progress visible in the district.
The FATEs involved wouldn't make any sense when progress has already happened.
If you missed them, you didn't miss much. The fun part was seeing the district get updated after the FATE.

But, I am pretty sure there will at least one, probably several more seasons for the Ishgard Restoration. So you will get plenty of chances to work on it.
I don't expect the Restoration to be finished until the next expansion launches.

[Canadane]

Ishgard Restoration isn't done. We've completed one small section of the zone. So anyone just getting there isn't going to miss out.
On top of this, I think it's a great thing the game has, it's part of a living breathing MMO, which is something we need more of, not less of. Something you can experience in the here and now. Something to tell fledgling friends years down the line how you helped build up this thing.
When we're done-done for good, I fully expect something else in the same style of play. It's not like there won't be future options to play.

[PharisHanasaki]

There are many progressions you probably missed on. Like Mor Dhona, Idyllshire and Ralghr's Reach. Those looked very different at the beginning of their expansion.

You can still help with next progression, but I guess if they are indeed releasing housing, they can't wait for everyone.

[Paddycakes]

There are many progressions you probably missed on. Like Mor Dhona, Idyllshire and Ralghr's Reach. Those looked very different at the beginning of their expansion.

You can still help with next progression, but I guess if they are indeed releasing housing, they can't wait for everyone.

Those progessions however were not associated with any kind of event though. Ishgard restoration was designed for us to have involvement in. I would have liked to seen how each of those areas looked originally but they wernt connected to anykind of progession that was supposed to involve everyone, ishgard is supposed to involve people who participate.