No more Island Sanctuary

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Originally Posted by Mcg55ss

I mean I played WoD the entire expansion. The similarities between it and Islands isn't much at all.

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As did I and I'm seeing more similarities than I would like. In my previous post I even forgot to include the copious amounts of "do nothing while you wait for timers to tick down on some building", be that for building, upgrading or resource generation.

Although I guess that feature could've just as easily been taken from any terrible mobile or facebook game.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

As did I and I'm seeing more similarities than I would like. In my previous post I even forgot to include the copious amounts of "do nothing while you wait for timers to tick down on some building", be that for building, upgrading or resource generation.

Although I guess that feature could've just as easily been taken from any terrible mobile or facebook game.

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Again the issue here is that IS isnt part of endgame power progression. Which was the real kicker for why Garrisons ultimately failed as part of the endgame where players were forced to do it. This anaolgy with WoD only half works with the argument presented.

But in terms of contentdesign then yeah IS is just a worse version of garrisons. But its saving grace is that its just a passing optional thing and it should stay that way.

It does need more substantial depth and activity besides factory management though like put some various mini-games or something

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Originally Posted by Noumenon

This is the worst side content to date since Stormblood. It is boring and shallow. Very disappointed that they intend to make more of this in 7.0.

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But...it lets you play other games! All you have to do is log in once a week, plug in some junk into the calendar, and then log out again! It's perfect. You can even set it all up on Tuesday right before your mandatory reclears, and then you won't have to log in again at all for the rest of the week. Isn't that great? It lets you fully enjoy other games. For just $13 a month, you can enjoy all of the other games you want (sold separately).

Stormblood forced you to play the game...GROSS!

I quite liked garrisons. They fed into the other aspects of the game rather nicely and when I pick up a game I want to actually play it and work towards greater goals. My main complaint was the lack of customisation and that the Alliance aesthetics were far more appealing than what the Horde ended up being stuck with.

As for what could be done in order to make Island Sanctuary more engaging? There could be treasure that washes ashore from time to time and deep in the recently added cave there could be enemies to fight for interesting rewards.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Theres one huge critical difference behind garrissons and Island Sanctuary that you missed.

It's not tied to any power progression so most players who already hated the content can continue to ignore it.

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It's not tied to power progression as such, but if the True Endgame (glamour) is your thing, they have filled it with basically all of this expansion cycle's glamours besides the crafted/treasure-map ones.

Compared to last cycle where we had the Firmament as our major source of glamours, and those came with the choice of earning it yourself or letting someone else do it and purchasing the end result, it is tedious that this time you have no choice but to level it up yourself (per character you play with) if you want any of the outfits.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

It's not tied to power progression as such, but if the True Endgame (glamour) is your thing, they have filled it with basically all of this expansion cycle's glamours besides the crafted/treasure-map ones.

Compared to last cycle where we had the Firmament as our major source of glamours, and those came with the choice of earning it yourself or letting someone else do it and purchasing the end result, it is tedious that this time you have no choice but to level it up yourself (per character you play with) if you want any of the outfits.

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That's what they did for V&C. It's lackluster content that misses the mark, but at least the majority (Admittedly not all) of the rewards are purchasable from other players.
And doing the IS very badly will eventually still get you the rewards. It's essentially a very very low effort timegate for those glam pieces.
Not defending the IS, just saying that I can see why the Glam pieces from the Island aren't purchasable in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I quite liked garrisons. They fed into the other aspects of the game rather nicely and when I pick up a game I want to actually play it and work towards greater goals. My main complaint was the lack of customisation and that the Alliance aesthetics were far more appealing than what the Horde ended up being stuck with.

As for what could be done in order to make Island Sanctuary more engaging? There could be treasure that washes ashore from time to time and deep in the recently added cave there could be enemies to fight for interesting rewards.

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Island Sanctuary Exploration for looking into those caves and Island Sanctuary Defense, for when monsters stsrt creeping out of said caves and you need to defend your land againat them. :3

I just want the option to teleport directly to your island sanctuary base

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Again the issue here is that IS isnt part of endgame power progression. Which was the real kicker for why Garrisons ultimately failed as part of the endgame where players were forced to do it. This anaolgy with WoD only half works with the argument presented.

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I guess it depends on what you consider power progression. IS isn't directly tied into gear progression but it does give you easy access to gathering/crafting materia and rare dyes which sell relatively well.

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Originally Posted by MsQi

There are a lot of similarities, but Garrisons were tired to the main story. They also made two gathering professions useless for the expansion. They are also used by the anti-housing faction of the playerbase as "evidence" that housing is bad for the community.

As limited as it is, the Island Sweatshop is a hundred times more customizable than Garrisons.

That said it really fails as a "sanctuary". It's pretty clear that was Tataru's idea. It's a business.

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What bugs me is that it's supposed to be a test for resettling Limsans and La Nosceas. Why set things up so mammets get used instead of having settlers wandering around a village and doing the work?

They should have ditched Tataru and the mammets, replaced them with people NPCs then had us report to Merlwyb (or any of the other city state leaders, maybe change it depending on the character's Grand Company).

But evidently the Japanese players think it's cute to be ordering mammets to work for them (or someone posted a few weeks after IS was first released).

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Originally Posted by Mcg55ss

Tell me you didn't play WoD without saying you didn't play WoD basically.

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It's not that far off.

Yes, I did play WoD (though I didn't buy until 6.2 was about to release). I was also one of the closed beta testers (why I bought it so late - beta was a steaming pile). I saw way more of Garrisons than I wanted.

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Originally Posted by Mcg55ss

I mean I played WoD the entire expansion. The similarities between it and Islands isn't much at all.

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So you were just AFKing in your Garrison not doing anything? Or did you finally do something with it when shipyard missions ended up required to get the legendary ring?

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Originally Posted by Theodric

As for what could be done in order to make Island Sanctuary more engaging? There could be treasure that washes ashore from time to time and deep in the recently added cave there could be enemies to fight for interesting rewards.

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Now that you mention that, wasn't one of the original teasers for IS supposed to be randomly spawning items to discover? I can remember that being mentioned and got the impression that it would include crafting materials.

While we ended up with that sort of via the rare creatures, it's really not quite the same as randomly running around the island when you have some free time to see if you can find valuable materials. Seems like they took that away from players and gave it to the mammets.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

If I had my way with it, I would continue it, but I would give people option to craft their own items for submission to earn Cowries

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And then people would just do that to rush through it. The early levels where gathering had to be done manualy to get xp were on that actualy not good design as it again did something like that.

The idea is that its side content that slowly expands over time. And to me the design should focus on relaxing as much as possible. Manual gathering should only be a fall back here (and sadly its a horrible one that that).

I think a few things realy need to be considered as potential fixes:
- Resource exchanging. As the granary is limited in delivering certain resources, you could quickly end up missing a few. If you could exchange some resources, that might mitigate the requirement to gather manualy (for example 3 of x can be converted to 2 y).
- Resource tokens. Potentialy obtained through your hub (and leveling increases rate of obtaining). With the intent to always buy the resources (could potentialy prevent the need from having to gather entirely. Especaily if you are running low on 1 specific resource).
- Better gather income from manual gathering: Gathering is truly not rewarding here! Any time spent here was better used for gathering resources you can sell on the market. By the time you even obtained 1 materia on your island, you could have gotten several from the open world gathering. And if something is needed here to avoid too much cowries being obtained, you can use a resource bar that boosts this income (similar to how xp works, where being offline slowly builds up a boost). And note, the boost here can be as high as 5x normal resources
- Add some additional chalenges to gathering. Create some special nodes (similar to open world timed nodes), that require a bit more thinking (a small minigame), and allow players to rotate a bit between these.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

What bugs me is that it's supposed to be a test for resettling Limsans and La Nosceas. Why set things up so mammets get used instead of having settlers wandering around a village and doing the work?

They should have ditched Tataru and the mammets, replaced them with people NPCs then had us report to Merlwyb (or any of the other city state leaders, maybe change it depending on the character's Grand Company).

But evidently the Japanese players think it's cute to be ordering mammets to work for them (or someone posted a few weeks after IS was first released).

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Maybe we could assign our Squadron and retainers to work on the island. Add the option to send them on vacation and then they wonder around the rest of the island.

How about inviting NPCs from around the worlds to visit and then they show up randomly?

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Originally Posted by Iscah

It's not tied to power progression as such, but if the True Endgame (glamour) is your thing, they have filled it with basically all of this expansion cycle's glamours besides the crafted/treasure-map ones.

Compared to last cycle where we had the Firmament as our major source of glamours, and those came with the choice of earning it yourself or letting someone else do it and purchasing the end result, it is tedious that this time you have no choice but to level it up yourself (per character you play with) if you want any of the outfits.

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That can be said about anything in this game but what glamour you want is completly subjective and is varied from player to player. Not every player who goes for glam does every content that has rewards to it.

In an MMO, power progression is first and foremost and since IS isnt tied to it, thankfully that isnt an issue. Although criticism for the lackluster activity is still warranted.