Ishgard Restoration phase 3 feedback thread

[Zenn]

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).

So basically the rankings would be based on who has the best RNG and so the game at that point would be to try to rank on every crafter or make alts and hope for better RNG.
Raising the collectability cap also heavily prefers RNG. There have been times where I've had tons of CP/dura left and hit max collectability because I got very favorable conditions during my craft and other times where I got several 6XXX crafts in a row. You can know the conditions ahead of time and make the best decisions but still there will be sometimes you won't hit max collectability. In a situation where there is effectively no max, you're going to try to spend a ton more time trying to get a ridiculous score because more time = more favorable RNG crafts. If you limit the number of crafts, effectively your ranking is based on how favorable your conditions were especially if you want to add bad conditions.

[DoH]

There is already ranked content in this game that is swayed by RNG. Triple Triad tournaments, Mahjong, and many other in-game competitions are examples of things that are affected by RNG but are also highly skill-dependent. In Triple Triad tournaments, you are limited to 20 games per tournament and can thus be hit hard under some of the rule sets by RNG; I've come in 1st place in some tournaments and not even made it into the top 6 in others because of this. With respect to Ishgard rankings, if the detrimental conditions proposed above always followed a beneficial condition, I think that it would actually allow players to plan ahead better (you could obviously observe through the detrimental conditions, but this would incentivize using other non-touch/synthesis abilities so that you're not burning too much CP on just observe). I understand that limiting the number of crafts would increase the impact of RNG as 100 may not be a large enough sample size to dilute its effects, but the current way of minimizing the impact is just to craft an absolutely ridiculous number of crafts, which gets back into the issue of "more time = higher rank" (which I consider to be a bigger issue). As I mentioned previously, during this ranking season I achieved the highest score on any class on my server (Gilgamesh), but it took a ridiculous amount of time to do that during the 10-day period; it was enough hours to be a full-time job for a lot of folks, and it continued throughout the weekend. I think the Ishgard rankings would be a lot more accessible to people if they had a finite number of materials to work with. Speaking which, to address another point you touched on, you would just be given a set number of materials (e.g., 100) at the outset. It would be like beast tribes or other collectible turn-ins so that you could craft it on whatever class you want, but once you used them up, that would be it. This way you couldn't just switch over to another class and get more materials. If someone wanted to try and get the achievement on an alt that was fully geared out, then sure, why not. If each craft took about 10 minutes, that would be another 17 hours they would have to spend on their alt trying to craft all of the items.

At the end of the day, I think that someone who really plans out the crafts and tests this out with trial synthesis beforehand would be able to achieve a better overall score than most other folks over 100 crafts despite any unfavorable RNG they may run into on some of their crafts.

[Zenn]

There is already ranked content in this game that is swayed by RNG. Triple Triad tournaments, Mahjong, and many other in-game competitions are examples of things that are affected by RNG but are also highly skill-dependent. In Triple Triad tournaments, you are limited to 20 games per tournament and can thus be hit hard under some of the rule sets by RNG; I've come in 1st place in some tournaments and not even made it into the top 6 in others because of this. With respect to Ishgard rankings, if the detrimental conditions proposed above always followed a beneficial condition, I think that it would actually allow players to plan ahead better (you could obviously observe through the detrimental conditions, but this would incentivize using other non-touch/synthesis abilities so that you're not burning too much CP on just observe). I understand that limiting the number of crafts would increase the impact of RNG as 100 may not be a large enough sample size to dilute its effects, but the current way of minimizing the impact is just to craft an absolutely ridiculous number of crafts, which gets back into the issue of "more time = higher rank" (which I consider to be a bigger issue). As I mentioned previously, during this ranking season I achieved the highest score on any class on my server (Gilgamesh), but it took a ridiculous amount of time to do that during the 10-day period; it was enough hours to be a full-time job for a lot of folks, and it continued throughout the weekend. I think the Ishgard rankings would be a lot more accessible to people if they had a finite number of materials to work with. Speaking which, to address another point you touched on, you would just be given a set number of materials (e.g., 100) at the outset. It would be like beast tribes or other collectible turn-ins so that you could craft it on whatever class you want, but once you used them up, that would be it. This way you couldn't just switch over to another class and get more materials. If someone wanted to try and get the achievement on an alt that was fully geared out, then sure, why not. If each craft took about 10 minutes, that would be another 17 hours they would have to spend on their alt trying to craft all of the items.

At the end of the day, I think that someone who really plans out the crafts and tests this out with trial synthesis beforehand would be able to achieve a better overall score than most other folks over 100 crafts despite any unfavorable RNG they may run into on some of their crafts.

Expert crafts don't really have a high skill cap that makes up for the RNG though. Your idea is basically going against what you want to accomplish though because people will spend more time ranking in more classes once they hit cap and making alts to rank to ensure a top spot. People that don't have enough time won't be able to do this.

[Ashemmi]

As I mentioned previously, during this ranking season I achieved the highest score on any class on my server (Gilgamesh), but it took a ridiculous amount of time to do that during the 10-day period; it was enough hours to be a full-time job for a lot of folks, and it continued throughout the weekend.

Yes, but that outlay wasn't a requirement to be competitive. Your 2M score was twice what you needed for first, nearly, and 3x what you needed to rank in your class. 400-500K was needed for the most part on the busiest servers. I'll concede the 1M-2M club had a full time job, but that group doesn't really constitute many. More power to you, but I don't consider your level of effort normal. The average top 12 score was in the 500K range. For me this was about 25 hours. There's no way to really know if I was more or less efficient than average.

The best solution I've seen is shorter seasons within the larger. If the season were a month long, there could be ten three day seasons. Allow only winning three, perhaps. A gold, bronze, and silver award for the number of times you've won. I think what you'll see is the first 9 days the heavy hitters will be going at it hard. Then competition will wane. If you miss it, there's the next. Generally no more than 15 put any serious investment in to the event per class.

Require a buff to be picked up while crafting, have the buff last for 2 hours. Before the buff can be regained, crafts need to be turned in.

There are creative ways to keep the nature of the competition in place, while making the reward a little more available. Honestly, not much more is needed. IMHO, ~9 people got a really raw deal. So what are we trying to fix? An outlay of 400k, for the most part, was all that was 'really' needed. 84% of whoever hit 400K grabbed the achievement. 400K isn't that high of a bar.

96 Titles
146 100K+ (50 without title)
122 200K+ (26 without title)
115 300K+ (19 without title)
102 400K+ (9 without title)
81 500K+ (3 without title)
55 600K+ (all titled)
39 700K+ (all titled)
27 800K+ (all titled)
23 900K+ (all titled)
16 1000K+ (all titled)
4 2000K+ (all titled)

[Alleo]

Well after three phases Ishgard is still as boring as it started. I honestly hoped that they would change it up at least (like they did with Eureka even if I still dont like that) but no its the same just with different items. In the end its nothing but a rowena turn in with some fates if the phases are still active and some points for the short time that rankings are done.

Give me the personal progress like they did with Doma (they can put people in different instances depending on their progress since we had that with the stormblood MSQ) and personal fates after I have given them enough turn ins so I get the feeling that I do them. You could even include some NPCs that are helping to give the feeling like its something done in a group. (While being able to see it all instead of it being so crowded that not even the items pop up..) Everything that people do could still count towards the server wide points which are then the gateways to the next round. (So if you are faster than the server you will hit a stop until the server catches up. In that time you are able to give them more items which will then help to get the goal faster)

With this everyone is able to do it in their own time and see the changes. And you could always make the new player housing zone a different one so that even if someone had not done the quests they could still at least go to the housing zone..heck you could make it so that someone that did not do it can visit it but not buy from it because technically you dont have created it at that moment. This could be another incentive to do the content and hold up some people to just buy another round of houses.

But I guess we will not get that and so this remains another disappointing content.

(Also the new weather in Diadem can go die...who thought this was good for hours to look at?)

[Morningstar1337]

Regarding daily turn ins. I'd think that is a good idea, though I'd prefer if it only affected the skybuilder points and not the scripts.

That said I also think it might be a good idea to have the rankings be active until the district is completed as opposed for 1 or two weeks. I feel it makes more sense to rank people when the areas are actually finished. Combined with a weekly cap of turn ins (30 per crafting Class, not sure how diadem items would be handled)

Having the mob drops only relevant mats for the level is a good idea and should be encouraged.

A cooldown for Diadem visits would also be interesting.

[Crushnight]

I personally don't think there should be a cap on how much you can hand over for points not with the level of rng currently there for expert crafts.

However I am in favor of a 5 or 6 day time limit to appraise items gathered/crafted, this would force hoarders by day 6 or 7 to at least show an idea what they are doing without fully giving it away either(as you could for example craft/gather little day 1-4/5 but do more from day 5/6 etc), basically not getting rid of the strategy but lessening the blow of someone coming outta the blue to take a top 12 spot.

[Kakure]

I would love to see the competition changed from a grindfest to something that more accurately reflects player understanding and ability, but the skill cap on expert crafts is just too low and the RNG too high to do that in the ways people are suggesting here.

If everyone had 50 attempts under the current expert crafting system, there would be a very narrow point spread at the top and the difference between the person with 37 max-quality crafts and the one with 39 would probably just be a function of luck. Increase the collectability cap to something like 10,500 and we would be forced to lean on Hasty Touch and Patient Touch to build stacks, introducing even more randomness into the rankings. Increase it to an unobtainably high number and the whole endeavor becomes 100% RNG.

There is a decided upper limit on what you can make without Good or Pliant procs. That might be a bit higher or lower depending on your approach and your particular melds and your tolerance for risk, but eventually you'll run into a wall where you simply cannot go any higher. Anything above that is only possible because of Pliant and Good conditions, and thus a reflection of your favor with the condition gods rather than your ability to squeeze blood from a stone. You need to be competent enough to use Tricks of the Trade and Manipulation in the right places, but that's not a super high bar. No one is ever going to look at a craft that hits 20,000 collectability and think "Wow, I wish I were good enough to do that!" They would rightly think "Wow, I wish I got that many Good procs in a single craft!"

There are a number of things SE could do to make expert crafting a bit less luck-based (tone down Pliant, lower the progress so players aren't forced to rely on Rapid Synthesis, etc.), but the only way to really make it a better reflection of player understanding and skill is to make expert crafting harder (as in more complicated, not just the same system we have now but with bigger numbers).

In my view, the way to do that is to make it less strictly reactive and more forward-looking. Crafting used to involve planning ahead, stacking nested buffs for optimal benefit. Now it mostly just involves reacting to conditions as they appear, which isn't all that hard. Ideally, it would involve both planning ahead AND reacting to what happens during the craft. I don't expect SE to bring back Steady Hand or Comfort Zone, but if they wanted to make crafting a bit more forward-looking again they could do some things like:

• Give players some control over conditions -- maybe a crafting equivalent to Impulsive Appraisal or a Careful Observation analogue that sets the condition to Normal and gives you whatever your old condition was on the next turn.
• Add more structured abilities, a la Whistle While You Work.
• Add more combo abilities. Some of the most interesting expert crafting decisions arise when you have something like Great Strides > Innovation > Preparatory Touch > Great Strides > Observe > [PLIANT].
• Make our buffs stack multiplicatively. Currently, all the %-based ability buffs stack additively so, for instance, Muscle Memory > Veneration > Groundwork x5 is exactly the same as Muscle Memory > Groundwork > Veneration> Groundwork x4. Players should be rewarded for understanding how abilities work and slotting them together optimally, not for understanding that it just doesn't matter.
• Make Waste Not less bad by letting us use Prudent Touch with it, at least for expert crafts where the inclusion of Sturdy (and odd durability levels) makes the WN/Prudent limitation seem a bit unnecessary. Even without the limitation, no one would use Waste Not before/apart from Manipulation anyway.
• Allow us to see the next condition in queue.

I'm not saying that reacting to conditions is bad and I understand that some RNG is necessary, but if you want crafting to better reflect player understanding and puzzle-solving skills, on any given step the answer to the question "What are you going to do the step after next?" probably shouldn't be "Who knows? It depends entirely on the next condition and the one after that."

[Kakure]

I also kind of wonder how prevalent hoarding/sandbagging really is. It seems to me that a lot of what people are talking about here is mostly just conjecture.

I personally added the vast majority of my points on the last three days, including ~600k points on the final day. I phoned it in for the first six days, then spent 8-10 hours a day crafting and turned in the bulk of what I made before bed, a couple hours after the daily cutoff (so most of what I crafted on day eight didn't appear until day nine and most of what I crafted on day nine didn't appear in my total until the final ranking). Sure, of course I realized that it benefited me to do that, but it was also just convenient for me. It was less a grand scheme to trick people for competitive advantage and more just... not wanting to pause in the middle of a productive crafting session to go play Kupo of Fortune fifty times.

It sucks to think that you have done enough to place and just miss out, and I have sympathy for anyone in that situation. But I am kind of curious why the assumption seems to be that someone who adds 100k or 200k or 300k points on the final day was saving up crafts for days and not just crafting at the end.

[KageTokage]

I also kind of wonder how prevalent hoarding/sandbagging really is. It seems to me that a lot of what people are talking about here is mostly just conjecture.

I personally added the vast majority of my points on the last three days, including ~600k points on the final day. I phoned it in for the first six days, then spent 8-10 hours a day crafting and turned in the bulk of what I made before bed, a couple hours after the daily cutoff (so most of what I crafted on day eight didn't appear until day nine and most of what I crafted on day nine didn't appear in my total until the final ranking). Sure, of course I realized that it benefited me to do that, but it was also just convenient for me. It was less a grand scheme to trick people for competitive advantage and more just... not wanting to pause in the middle of a productive crafting session to go play Kupo of Fortune fifty times.

It sucks to think that you have done enough to place and just miss out, and I have sympathy for anyone in that situation. But I am kind of curious why the assumption seems to be that someone who adds 100k or 200k or 300k points on the final day was saving up crafts for days and not just crafting at the end.

I don't recall anyone thinking such meager point gains were unusual.

I'm thinking stuff along the lines of 600K+ or in the case of FSH one million+ personally.