Ishgard Restoration phase 3 feedback thread

[UsagiAndCrepes]

I think there are a lot of things about the event which are unhealthy or incentivize and encourage self-destructive behavior. Above all else I hope they can somehow address that so that some people don't spend all day on it or let their personal life or career suffer. Maybe a personal timer that limits activities to 8 hours a day.

I feel that preparation outside of the event plays a far bigger role than either time or skill. Most people don't start the event on equal footing so ranking is a little odd because it obscures those differences in situations. I think it's better to think of it as a personal challenge.

To keep interest in the restoration proper I think it would be nicer if they had repeat competitions from previous seasons separated by a few weeks. That way you can also get the old Firmament title and the new but cancelled Ascendant title.

Personally I prefer the Ascendant title more and I feel that it's a shame it was changed to the old one.

Most of all I hope everyone had fun and aren't too hard on themselves or on others.

[Kamome-chan]

All these people complaining about hoarding -- it's a valid tactic. There's no legitimate reason to have turn-ins expire, this works fine just the way it is. It's your own fault for letting your guard down.

No it's bad because people invest time and effort for the title and get the same title has the guy who got 100 points because people purposely deceive others.

Imagine it is the last day you're rank 12, you have a lot more points than rank 13 and you craft some expert to get even more points until the season ends.

You go to bed and then you wake up the next day, you can't wait to see the score and your name in the saint of the firmament top 12.

Then you are now rank 13 because someone literally came out of nowhere because he tried to deceive you by holding on his crafts.

Let's be honest you'd be mad and don't pretend you'd be like that's fine he used a clever strategy all my effort are now for nothing I could have just handed 3 craft and get the same title anyway but that's okay.

[tymora]

Let's be honest you'd be mad and don't pretend you'd be like that's fine he used a clever strategy all my effort are now for nothing I could have just handed 3 craft and get the same title anyway but that's okay.

Yep, I will be sore over it for a while...but I accept this as a valid strategy. Annoying but whatever. This is fairly minor compared to other shortcomings.

In general, I think the improvements can largely be split into 3 categories for DoH.

1. Balance out server unfairness
a) Achievements and/or titles by points only
b) Global ranking instead of by server

2. Fix the botting problem or at least make it such that humans can compete with the bots within reasonable limits
a) Limited crafting attempts
b) Daily quotas and caps
c) Proactive, strict policing (e.g. bans, lockouts, challenge questions on randomized UI...etc)


3) Miscellaneous (enhance sportsmanship?)
a) Limit to single competing category
b) Split title and achievements
c) Ranking rewards to not time-limited items/achievements (e.g. Materia, gil...etc)

[JohnSpawnVFX]

No it's bad because people invest time and effort for the title and get the same title has the guy who got 100 points because people purposely deceive others.

Imagine it is the last day you're rank 12, you have a lot more points than rank 13 and you craft some expert to get even more points until the season ends.

You go to bed and then you wake up the next day, you can't wait to see the score and your name in the saint of the firmament top 12.

Then you are now rank 13 because someone literally came out of nowhere because he tried to deceive you by holding on his crafts.

Let's be honest you'd be mad and don't pretend you'd be like that's fine he used a clever strategy all my effort are now for nothing I could have just handed 3 craft and get the same title anyway but that's okay.

The competition ends at a specific time, not when you go to bed at the last day.

This reaches level of "everyone has to go to bed at the same time I do and stop turning in items, otherwise I'll throw a tantrum"

[Gourdian]

Didn't participate in this round, but did rank before.

I do support everyone being given maybe a buff once a day for an hour or two that enables crafting of recipes that give rank score. I'd like expert to be a system outside of just the rankings though. I think people are hesitant to admit this because of how long crafting has just been "hit macro buttons", but it does take some level of skill akin to playing puzzle games or anything about trying to control your luck, & that's fun.

Expert itself: A skill level uptune from P2 would've been nice, but P3 kind of put it into the more rng & time > skill ranges. Some suggested unlimited caps, but given the competition is also an endurance race, I feel like the current crafts are genuinely so punishing that bots gain an advantage by simply not having to deal with the mental impact of it & not having human error. People will just find it less fun and more tiring to constantly lose out to a pass/fail binary (and to lose by even trying puzzle through a shitty craft because of the time inefficiency) rather than "how far can I take this craft with my poor luck". I support absurd caps only if the competition wasn't a 10-day, no limit ordeal. I'm sure it's not too bad with some refining, but when I asked others about their methods, it was still a lot of "know when to cut your losses", which, previous point.

Sandbagging: I don't personally have an issue with the base concept, & I lost 1st to letting my guard down to sandbagging before, even as I expected it. & Even without exact scores, you can still gain info from the daily leaderboard by watching people's rates/comparing their ingame activity vs. just taking the number at face value. However, it is true enough that people with more retainers- a paid feature- have a strategic advantage here, & in the end, I support a timer on turning stuff in for that reason alone.

Botting: Another highly discouraging thing. They've shown no acknowledgement or concern about it. Maybe they think the ranking system isn't worth the time, but it does cut into the fun for a lot of people. Was wrong about this bit.

Is it fun? Expert crafting is a really interesting system, and fun. It's given crafting so much experimenting within the short time of its relevancy. Friendly competition is fun. But for people playing on an online game, who don't see each other face to face, who can barely be certain that someone isn't just a bot, a lot of the sportsmanship that makes competing fun just isn't there; coupled with how punishing and draining the whole ranking system is...?? iunno man. P2 was fun because it was new, people were excited, everyone had to come up with new ideas, and rivals approached each other and motivated each other. That isn't a universal experience though, and the system doesn't support or promote that sort of thing in any way. There's way too much suspicion and fatigue for most people. I just don't think this system is sustainable as "fun" content as time goes on.

[Zenn]

Botting: Another highly discouraging thing. They've shown no acknowledgement or concern about it. Maybe they think the ranking system isn't worth the time, but it does cut into the fun for a lot of people.

Botting is highly discouraging but not to name names or witchhunt there have been at least 2 people that I've heard about that were suspended and removed from the rankings. One was a player that responded and said they were playing and not botting and (I think) sent video proof but I don't remember the exact details.

I also agree that expert crafting could be used elsewhere (there are the 500k in each class achievements you can still get outside of rankings though). Would be cool if highest ilvl crafted gear was made with expert crafting rather than a day 1 macro.

[Gourdian]

Oh I see! Thank you for the correction, I'm honestly disconnected from the wider crafting community and was just watching a few friends go through it, & heard a lot of "we caught this person as red-handed as it gets and nothing happened". But that's good to hear.

Also-- not directed @ you Zenn-- I personally do think there are less bots than people generally think & that a lot of botting accusations fly without much ground. It's just kinda unfortunate that even a single one will cause this suspicion & the subsequent discouragement.

[KageTokage]

Botting is highly discouraging but not to name names or witchhunt there have been at least 2 people that I've heard about that were suspended and removed from the rankings. One was a player that responded and said they were playing and not botting and (I think) sent video proof but I don't remember the exact details.

That implies that they actually do resort to the simple, but effective bot checking method of "send them a tell and see if they respond/ignore you".

Though that just makes me question why bans aren't more common even moreso.

I'd like to hope they're actually making adjustments in the long term and that their increased diligence isn't strictly due to the rankings.

[Kaurhz]

Ranked last season; didn't attempt a great deal to rank this season, barring sating my own curiosity- Seeing if much changed to approach with durability, how I executed my finishers, and just overall playing around whilst I went for one of the achievements associated with finest featherfall.

That being said, as my thoughts were last season, they remain true this season. The idea of expert recipes are really good- But currently, I think they're very, very poorly designed and implemented. Let's see-

First of all the issues players seem to have with hoarding, and the general accusations people have with 'botting' just lead me to believe the whole do as many turn-ins as you like is a poor way of handling these recipes- Just have players allowed a finite # of attempts throughout the entire ranking season (Something like 20-30 per day, or 200-300 for the ranking period). Now RNG and all factors heavily into this but what I would suggest, is slightly buffing centered condition (Make it equivalent to the good ol' Steady Hand II at the least!!!)- Pliant should not be 50%, but rather I think a 30% reduction to CP cost is more than adequate, and then buff the overall probability of the 3 material conditions alongside implement more conditions- Let's say the opposite of these; something that decreases success rate; increases the CP cost, and doubles the durability cost- Make it so that strategic use of Careful Observation amounts to a lot more beyond the use of baiting for a good condition on Byregot's Blessing- And for heaven's sake make it so that it actually changes the material condition, and cannot be used consecutively on a single step. Alongside this make Normal conditions feel more like a rare blessing than anything else. - Currently, everything in these rankings contradicts the approach they've aimed for in many other areas of the game. I can at least say beyond the 'discovery' phase of actually learning these recipes back in last season I found them overall boring and nothing but a real, real chore. They weren't fun, especially so with there being no objective difference between someone who ranks 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, or the bare minimal 12th place.

Further, I would like the idea of stat syncing. Giving a debuff similar to that of what is found in the Ixali quests to set your stats for the recipe- That way everyone has an equal chance to rank irrespective of how hard their pockets are lined, or whether they went through the torture of grinding 100k yellow, and white scrips. - I would like to emphasize I do not do this out of feeling spoilt or lazy, but I do think players on smaller, and less competitive servers should have a lot more competition. I can probably count the number of people on my fingers that are melded sufficiently enough to reliably push out tier 3 (without requiring the blessing of pliant on Manipulation, or Patient Touch hitting on centered) on Spriggan.

[DoH]

The addition of "bad" procs is a really good idea. I'm not sure if it would be better to have them occur randomly or, to reduce the amount of RNG and promote more careful planning, they should occur after their corresponding "beneficial" proc (like how "Poor" always follows "Excellent" in normal crafts). I tend to think the the latter might be better. I also think they could leave the current procs as is but perhaps add the following:

- Rigid: Makes the CP cost of the next ability cost 1.5x as much
- Flimsy: Makes the Durability cost of the next ability cost 1.5x as much
- Misaligned: Reduces the chance of the next touch or synthesis ability hitting by 20% (this would apply even to touch/synthesis abilities that are normally 100% success rates)
- Poor: Reduces the quality of the next touch ability by 25%

I still believe that raising the collectability cap to something unattainable (e.g., 100,000 instead of 8,240) would promote a more skill-based approach. Also, perhaps make the durability for these 100 instead of 50 or 60 to see how far people can go and reward them heavily for making it into higher tiers (because each craft would take a lot more time to complete). For example:

Collectability: Skyward Points
0~7,500: 0
7,000~10,000: 200~300
10,001~13,000: 600~700
13,001~16,000: 1,400~1,500
16,001~19,000: 3,000~3,300
19,001~22,000: 6,600~7,000
etc.

As discussed on previous pages, this would work best if they limit the number of materials you are given at the outset so that anyone can compete. Instead of being partially a competition of "who has the time/resources/connections to obtain materials?", players would be given a finite number of materials to use for the 10 days, which they could work on at their own pace. To avoid wasting these materials on practice runs, they could use Trial Synthesis much like Feast players can do trial matches. Perhaps granting enough to make 100 crafts as others have suggested would work, although RNG would obviously play into this a bit more with a smaller number of crafts. The problem is that, as crafts take longer, you can't expect folks to craft too many of them or else it once again starts to become a competition of "who has more time." If one of these crafts took 10 minutes to complete, that would be 17 hours of crafting over 10 days for 100 crafts; 33 hours for 200 crafts; and 50 hours for 300 crafts. 100 crafts may be the sweet spot because it would really promote people to think and carefully craft each and every item (instead of the current approach which, for many, is throw it away and start over if the opener wasn't successful in order to churn out as many as possible).