Don't Introduce New Titles for Next Ishgard Restoration

[MrThinker]

Reddit is such a terrible site I wish people would stop using it lol

Unfortunately, the average person looking for news on ff14 isn't going to try and make sense of google translated interviews, or learn japanese, and will thus rely on those who can. The translators on reddit tend to be the most well known, and while yes mistranslations occur, they usually arent so bad as to be completely wrong... usually. If what you are saying is true, then this another false alarm.
So unless they have friends who can provide more literal translations, reddit is what most people will stick to.

[NanaWiloh]

live letter confrimed new ranking season coming.

[ItMe]

Wait...

Do we KNOW that the new rankings are coming with new titles?
Or are they just making the previous titles available again?

[Canadane]

Wait...

Do we KNOW that the new rankings are coming with new titles?
Or are they just making the previous titles available again?

They just announced the new titles in the live letter.
I was wrong in my original translation and I feel bad for it. Though I’m still blaming Yoshi for not being clear in context lol

It’s actually very distressing news

[Jojoya]

Now that the live letter has announced new titles are planned for the new leaderboard ranking season but you're looking for additional feedback...

Please, don't add new titles and achievements for leaderboard rankings.

We were told that the titles would remain the same each season and previous winners would be excluded from future season rankings. That way players wouldn't feel pressured into a stressful competition on a repeat basis for the sake of trying to get whatever the new rewards were.

It worked. People were a lot more relaxed because they knew if they didn't get their title the first time, they'd get another opportunity later. They could decide when they felt ready to compete instead of being pressured into a series of one-time only competitions for a new set of unique rewards.

Do this and you lied to the player base. You're taking away the future opportunity you told them they would have to get those titles, leaving them disappointed. It's not going to encourage them to participate more. It's going to encourage them to stop bothering altogether. They're going to feel betrayed and left without a chance to get a title they wanted to show their contribution to the Restoration.

Those few who remain intent on getting the new titles will be doing so at the expense of their health, family, friends, work, school and other real life activities over the course of a stressful 10 day period that will likely burn them out and cause them to unsubscribe because that's the only way they'll have a chance to earn a title competing against the many players who turned to the bot programs to get their Phase II rankings through blatant, unremorseful cheating and the increasing number of players who will no doubt be doing the exact same thing in Phase III to get the new titles because it worked so well in Phase II.

This isn't a PvP-centric community. Trying to force more of these one time only special reward competitions pitting player against player against bots isn't going to strengthen the community, it's going to destroy it. And that would be ironic because crafting and gathering should be about building a stronger community together.

Is that honestly what you want? What do you gain from it? What does the game gain from it?

If this is just a ploy to try to increase participation in the Restoration, you're going about things the wrong way. Stop promoting the leaderboard titles that only a few hundred "elite" players and bots per world can earn. Start promoting the other Restoration achievements with titles that can be earned by every player.

A large number of players, possibly even a majority, had no clue the "Height of..." achievements and their titles existed for Phase II. Mention those achievements in Diadem shout and players respond "Never heard of them, what are they?".

It's sad, but not surprising. Those achievements were never listed in the patch notes. They were never listed on the Ishgard Restoration page on the Lodestone. If a player knew about them, it was usually because the dataminers chose to break the ToS to help the player community by sharing information about changes and new additions that Square Enix didn't feel was worth mentioning.

Imagine how much participation in Phase II would have increased if only the entire player base had known there were additional titles to be earned by everyone, not just the leaderboard titles reserved for the elite few.

If participation is a problem, there is your solution. Start promoting the things everyone can earn instead of just promoting what can be earned only by a tiny number of elite players.

[Driavna]

The main reason everyone is dreading new titles is because how bad the whole system is (+ bot situation in NA/EU). Just keep the same title and figure it out a better system that reward "crafting skill", "problem solving" and "creativity" instead of no-life the whole thing.

@Jojoya I'm personally aware of most of the crafting/gathering related titles but I'm just ignore them. Why? Crafting the same thing is extremely boring after X amount of times.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

SNIP

This deserves more likes

[Liam_Harper]

I doubt I'll be participating this time. I don't know what they think they're doing to crafting, but I've accepted for a while now that it's just no longer for me. I'll get my max penta-melded 5.3 set handed over to me on a plate week one and that'll be it for me.

Competing against bots spamming the same collectible hundreds of times in a short window for a title, then back to nothing worth making and a dead mb is meant to be my "endgame"? I'll pass, thanks.

[hqdm]

Mixed feeling:

I enjoyed trying to figure out different rotation, improvements, method etc for the expert crafts.
I didn't enjoy the feeling of being forced into long sessions of crafting.
But I didn't think it was all that cutthroat either.

I ended up with ~1.1m point spread across my DoH. Because the green title looked temporary, I only had goal of get to 150k and swap to new class.
Like this, still ended up with 2-3 Saint title, and I'd started 2 or 3 days late. I had ignored ishgard for the first 1-2 days, as I had midterms around that point, then about 1/2 a day to figure out what I was doing and start crafting, but "only" 6-8h session/day or so, as my patience + attn span aren't that great.

I don't think that qualifies as casual hours, but it's also not really maximizing time spent to the point where bots are a necessity to compete.
There was a post where the 13th place was salty about being pushed out of the rankings by "no-lifers", but only had 350k points across 10 days.
The creative part seems to be finding the most efficient method, so that point/hr can increase. 20-25k/hr reasonable I think, at which point 350k only ~14-15 hour. But at the same time, it's also kind of mind numbing and not very fun to do the same crafts for 15hrs, which this ranking system rewards, and I was really looking forwards to not being pressured into the same grind again.

I don't mind the grind, but why force it to 10 days rather than the whole patch?

[Jojoya]

But I didn't think it was all that cutthroat either.

I agree that it wasn't all that cutthroat but part of that was because SE told players there would be additional seasons for other players to get a chance to earn the titles.

With Expert being new, many decided to take their time getting used to it and go for their title at a later date.

Imagine what things would have been like if we were told upfront that would be our only chance to get those titles.