I just wanted to put my thoughts down about my perspective on Ishgard Restoration after achieving Saint on all three phases as a crafter—what worked and didn't work, what could be better, what I'd like to see in a future version of this content.

Saint is achievable by anyone without killing yourself
I started recording the amount of time I spent crafting during each ranking starting with the 2nd ranking. I ended up only needing to craft for about 2-3 hours a day for the 10-day ranking period in order to get Saint. I spent a bit more time on this round because I was considering going for #1, but I would have only needed to craft 1 hour a day if I was only going for Top 12. Except for the most competitive and populated servers (e.g. Tonberry, Balmung, etc.), this seems to hold true regardless of server. See this spreadsheet to see how your server stacks up; the vast majority have cutoffs well below the 2-3 hour/day benchmark. Obviously 2-3 hours a day will eat up a significant amount of your daily play time for most players but that's to be expected out of a competition. In short, you did not need to spend an unhealthy/unconscionable amount of time if your only goal was Top 12. DoL on the other hand is another story........

The shape of competition needs work
All that said, ranking is still a numbers game in terms of hours spent. Don't get me wrong; I think expert crafting is an interesting puzzle that I commend the devs for designing to be close to (in-game) macro-proof. Especially with the new conditions from this last phase, the crafting puzzle itself is in really good shape. It's the shape of the overarching competition which needs rethinking. As I said, time = ranking. More time = higher ranking. With a 10 day long ranking period, you see some people hurting their bodies (or resorting to bots, see below) to get an edge. As far as I can tell, the length of the period is arbitrary; it could just as easily be 5 days or any other number of days and it would be just as competitive but for a shorter length of time, which might lead to less no-lifing. But that would just be a band-aid on the system and still have the problem of time = ranking. Some people have suggested limited turn-ins. Or a hybrid system where the first X items you turn in per day are worth more. Anything that decreases the incentive to no-life and abuse your body with extreme play time would be a benefit in my opinion.

Yoshida promised "graduating out" and what we got was... something else
In an interview shortly before SHB launch, Yoshida said that in order to "avoid the same top tier players from dominating it every season, they designed it so you can graduate and be done with it after you are rewarded for being top a single time". Note that this is a fan translation of an official interview so nuances may be lost. It's not clear whether he meant that people who rank top tier will be barred from competing again or if they will be allowed to compete but with no additional rewards. Regardless, the intention seemed to be to let people who got Top 12 and Saint title "graduate" and not have to compete again in later seasons if they don't want to. This interpretation is common in this thread in the JP official forums.

Prior to 5.31, Yoshida announced in a LIVE letter that there would be brand new titles for the 2nd ranking, asking for feedback. People revolted because they were afraid they "missed" the title. Meanwhile, achievement hunters like myself buckled up to rank again after previously believing we were done and could take it easy/slow with the new season. Lots of suggestions were flying around including combining the achievements so new Saints would get the old title and achievement from ranking in the new season. Instead we got a weird hacky solution, where there are multiple achievements that award the same cosmetic title, but there are separate listings for the same title in your title list. Speaking only for myself and the other high end achievement hunters I've talked to about it, this solution did not have the intended effect of deterring us from competing again (and "occupying" spots that could have gone to new people). There's a new achievement so I went for it. I would have preferred not to have to go hard on the rankings again but that's what happens when you tie achievements to things. If they picked any one of the other solutions that kept the "graduation and don't need to do it again" idea that Yoshida first proposed, this could have been avoided.

Botting is a problem
The B word. I don't have much more to say that others haven't said better. The evidence out there is clear as day for both DoL and DoH being able to be botted. The spirit of competition is undermined when people aren't on a level playing field, whether that's account sharing, multi-boxing with mirrored inputs, or actively botting with a 3rd party program. There's still time before rewards go out to investigate and ban/suspend players who cheated in some way to achieve their ranking. I hope the Special Investigation Team is more proactive next time to stop people from even doing it in the first place.

Where to go next?
To be completely honest, I don't think we need a new Ishgard Restoration-type content in 6.0. Restoration paired well with the crafting and gathering changes that occurred over the course of 5.X. It got lots of people into crafting and gathering and gave them a speed boost to catch up with leveling if they needed it. Leveling DoL/H has never been particularly hard or time consuming but it is a bit daunting to think about leveling all 11 at once from scratch. Ishgard Restoration accomplished addressing that problem, so they're in a better position to level to 90 next time. Certainly there are places we could go restore, but I don't think there's a pressing need to have another thing fill this content "slot" in the next expansion, especially without sincerely reimagining what the competition will consist of (see my point above). A one-expansion gap between Ishgard Restoration-type content to help people "catch up" with leveling is probably the right move.