Did Island Sanctuary satisfy any reasons you want a house?

I'm fine with it in place of a house. I dislike the massive cost of housing anyway and even trying to afford furnishings for just an apartment can be a major pain, so just being able to have a nice island I can go to and run around by myself if I want is much nicer for me personally.

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Originally Posted by Minato777

The whole reason I want a house is because the game keeps giving me 2 retainers full of decorations worth yet makes housing one of the most bullshit processes to get and to keep in the game.

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As I've said in other threads... I know a lot of people seem to feel strongly that nothing usable on Island Sanctuary should ever be earned anywhere but on Island Sanctuary, but I kind of want exactly the opposite. Namely, I would really like to see SQEX stop giving out housing decorations (especially outdoor housing decorations, which can't be used in apartments) for achievements, rare (EX trial material) crafts, or seasonal events; I think instead, they should give out, like... alternate appearances for Island Sanctuary buildings, or alternate landmarks.

For instance, instead of a cherry tree to put in the yard of your house (which you may not have), give out a permit for a lovely tiny little park with cherry trees and a picnic spread out underneath it that you can put into one of your landmark spots on your sanctuary. Then everyone can use it, since everyone can have a sanctuary.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Some players ask for access to gardening but aren't always specifically stating it's because they want to grow Thavnarian Onions. Growing crops on the island is similar to how we grow in a garden patch (except we don't get to automate the garden patch tending via mammets).

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Side note: let me make a garden mammet for my actual house so that if I have a family emergency and can't be on for a couple of days, my Thavnairian onions I'm growing for the FC don't all die.

(Though if I know I have to be gone for a while, I will log on long enough to pick up the garden plot and put it in storage. The fact that crop state is basically metadata a'la dye information on gear, and so putting away a garden plot stores it with all the crops functionally in stasis... that can be a lifesaver at times. But still.)

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

First, I'll repeat what has been said over and over: Island Sanctuary is not a replacement/substitute for housing.

Just the same, it has a few of the features that players frequently mention when talking about why they want a house (gardening, larger private space, outdoor area, etc.).

With that in mind, we've had a week now to explore Island Sanctuary to see what we can do with it. Has Island Sanctuary satisfied at least part of your reasons for wanting a house?

If so, where did it "hit the spot"?

What does it still lack that you expect to get from a house?

What has been the overall impact on your desire to get a house?

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My immediate reaction to it after properly playing it a bit and taking my time was "No but it's a start."

It's not instanced housing, it's nowhere near the same. It's Stardew XIValley. And I say this with as much endearment as I can, it's not meant to come across as insulting. You can tell that it's not meant to be housing. But it does show that we have the infrastructure and the possibility for a robust housing system.

The issue comes with the fact that we already have housing anyway, and I doubt Square will up and revamp the whole thing. Especially since SE insists that they want the current design for housing so we can establish neighbourhood communities with our neighbours. A fantasy which rarely ever happens. You do have neighbours who interact, but it's a rare occurrence, it's not the norm. And we shouldn't be categorizing an entire experience based only "it's possible for this to happen" when it happens so little. I'd say it's more noticeable around venues or in certain datacenters where people are more prone to interacting with one another.

If we had a bit more to Island Sanctuary to the point where it could become an alternative to housing, then we'd be in a better position to answer OP's question. As it stands though, it doesn't.

Everyone I spoke to about this topic and Island Sanctuary said that if Square decided to make FC housing be more like this, it really wouldn't be losing out on much, and it would finally give us airships and submarines that we could directly interact with. And given the way the island is done, it being on a larger scale for FC members to pitch in would be even cooler. It would come at the cost of interacting with other players in the neighborhood, but since we rarely see any of ours in Empyreum, the impact would not be felt.

No. IS has almost nothing to do with housing (which they were clear about even before we knew anything about IS). It's almost like a reskinned Golden Saucer variant: all the minigames serve one purpose with a special currency. The customization, such as it is, offers even less than Garrisons (which came out in 2014).

It's mildly fun content but I wish they had just focused on finding a way to expand the functionality of apartments or committing themselves to instanced housing.

It was very underwhelming & lacked the actual fun & joy animal crossing or stardew valley have- We'll have to see how Islands are updated to scratch that itch.
The devs need to go play animal crossing & stardew valley & hopefully they'll understand what made those games good

As it stands, It's currently a tom nook simulator (building, spending & grinding but zero customization) that let's you pet animals so it it was fun at 1st because it was new & I assumed once we built more, more fun would unlock but it didn't

It does nothing to scratch the itch of owning a house in ffxiv. The only thing that would scratch it, is instanced housing that you can customize any which way

I'm hesitant about what's to come for island sanctuary- will it be just more content they abandon?

Island Sanctuary never had anything to do with housing.
It's basically this expansion's answer to the Doman Reconstruction and Ishgard Restoration, using the 'exploration zone' resources that would have been Eureka/Bozja.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

I never wanted IS as a house replacement, and I have no idea why some people started painting it as such.

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They did try to sell IS as a kind of personal oasis you can work on to unwind with some form of customizable features (just not housing/furnishing ones) and that you can do at your own pace. ┐(´∀｀ )┌

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

Especially since SE insists that they want the current design for housing so we can establish neighbourhood communities with our neighbours.

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When was the last time anybody from Square said anything about this? Google isn't coming up with much besides Yoshi-P apologizing for the lottery disaster with sprinklings of interviews where they talk about making housing (and apartments) more accessible in 2015 and 2017. Seriously if you can point me to any interview or direct communication that insists I'd love to read it. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you're not going to find anything like that in the last 2-3 years.

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

The issue comes with the fact that we already have housing anyway, and I doubt Square will up and revamp the whole thing.

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I've said it before, the ward system is too expensive to scale. Scale it to meet the demand on the popular servers and you'll have empty houses everywhere else. Adding wards requires additional hardware. We know this and Square knows this. The cost of the amount of hardware they'd need would fund a decent sized team (8-10) for a few years. Throwing hardware at the problem only solves it until that additional supply is exhausted.

Building a much more flexible housing system that can scale with the server population allows them to put the hardware where its needed. Square knows this.

Riddle me this: For the love of little faery apples why did they put IS on the housing servers of all places? It's not like those servers had any spare capacity.

If IS was truly meant to be standalone why weren't they partitioned into their own cluster? I would like to think that Square's devops folks aren't that naive. Kinda beggars belief when you consider that XIV is reasonably stable compared to broader industry standards (which puts them head and shoulders above most of the gamesdev niche).

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

If IS was truly meant to be standalone why weren't they partitioned into their own cluster? I would like to think that Square's devops folks aren't that naive. Kinda beggars belief when you consider that XIV is reasonably stable compared to broader industry standards (which puts them head and shoulders above most of the gamesdev niche).

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"■The following issue has been addressed:
・There are cases where the Cross-world Linkshell, PvP team, or fellowship will be disbanded if the owner (Cross-world Linkshell/fellowship: Master, PvP team: Team leader) has no more subscription days on their account and their character is withdrawn."



Yes, I do think their devs are a bit naive. lol

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

"■The following issue has been addressed:
・There are cases where the Cross-world Linkshell, PvP team, or fellowship will be disbanded if the owner (Cross-world Linkshell/fellowship: Master, PvP team: Team leader) has no more subscription days on their account and their character is withdrawn."



Yes, I do think their devs are a bit naive. lol

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False equivalence. That's an oversight and a lack of test coverage. What I'm talking about is a suicidal operational decision.

The dev team that codes and the QA team that tests are not the same team or even skill set that decides what parts of the system lives where. Despite the small indy memes CBIII is not some 8-man team where everybody wears all hats.

One thing I will say, i hit rank 9 and built my final building (of course, a lighthouse on the hill) and the island still doesn't feel like its mine. I think even surface level cosmetic customisation would go a long way to alleviating this.

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Originally Posted by Lustre

One thing I will say, i hit rank 9 and built my final building (of course, a lighthouse on the hill) and the island still doesn't feel like its mine. I think even surface level cosmetic customisation would go a long way to alleviating this.

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Its not your island. Its Tataru's. You just work there and manage it for her monetary empire.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

First, I'll repeat what has been said over and over: Island Sanctuary is not a replacement/substitute for housing.

Just the same, it has a few of the features that players frequently mention when talking about why they want a house (gardening, larger private space, outdoor area, etc.).

With that in mind, we've had a week now to explore Island Sanctuary to see what we can do with it. Has Island Sanctuary satisfied at least part of your reasons for wanting a house?

If so, where did it "hit the spot"?

What does it still lack that you expect to get from a house?

What has been the overall impact on your desire to get a house?

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It definitely satisfied my need of having an island, a bathhouse island, and a village of hard-working mammets which I didn't know I wanted until I saw it.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

It definitely satisfied my need of having an island, a bathhouse island, and a village of hard-working mammets which I didn't know I wanted until I saw it.

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Between this and Ameliance's questline, it made me want a Puppetmaster job even more (that isn't limited). ｡ﾟ(TヮT)ﾟ｡

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

False equivalence. That's an oversight and a lack of test coverage.

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Moreover, I would make a solid bet it's an unintended consequence of all the cross-world changes they introduced to support datacenter travel. Many, many devs are terrible about re-testing every other part of a system not directly tied to something new but which might be affected by it nonetheless; comprehensive regression testing is incredibly time-consuming compared to just basic "does the new thing work when we try obviously-related A, B, and C?" smoke testing. This is not unique to SQEX. Heck, it's not even remotely unique to game development.

As for why they bundled Island Sanctuary onto the housing servers, I half-wonder if the various instance servers allocate resources in different ways and if Island Sanctuary is not fundamentally the same type of instance as housing interiors (on some lower level). On a wild guess, it might be that dungeons/raid/trials have no persisted state; when you leave a dungeon, the game does not need to remember which chests you opened or skipped. When you go into the same dungeon again later, it's completely fresh. As such, it does not need any sort of channel to communicate with any sort of persistent storage; the only things that remain from the instance are things that were put into your inventory (which is almost certainly handled by an entirely separate system).

Conversely, housing instances need to load state from persistent storage, and when they're torn down they need to have saved any changed state back into that storage... and while Island Sanctuary has a lot less state to persist, it still does need to persist it.

And if "obtain new dedicated hardware" is not a viable path -- which, let's be fair, it's generally not at present, due to General Real-World Stuff -- it may have been easier to put island sanctuary onto instance servers already set up to handle the appropriate sort of instancing (e.g. instances with persistent state), rather than trying to re-engineer other instance servers to be able to host the appropriate instance type.

(Which doesn't change the fact that it makes me wince to see.)

not really because i can't use furniture items/decorate an interior of a home that ideally would have walls

only reason i dont go for a house atm is because you're basically required to stay subscribed to keep it and, sometimes, i don't feel like playing for a month and 15 a mo for fantasy house rent is kinda stupid to pay in those periods.

No, not at all.. I knew this had nothing to do with housing yet it has several shortcomings for me.
Since I feel like this is going to be unpopular and complainy try to read everything with a healthy dose of IMO :rolleyes:

First of all, they told us this: "Island Sanctuary for those adventurers seeking a taste of the slow life."
So I'm thinking okay, chill retirement content, and yet here I am essentially doing unpaid labor for Tataru /s. Still, there is nothing chill about needing 50 diff materials and having to set up each and every day of the week in my workshops that run on a real 24h timer, a clock constantly ticking down is the opposite of slow for me.

The entire thing is heavily time gated because of cowries, and there isn't really much to do aside from just grabbing the rewards you want.
Green currency has not much of a point to existing right now.

Another issue is there is really nowhere that is actually cozy, every landmark I've unlocked so far is filled with Mammets who ruin the atmosphere of even the locations that are nice, it doesn't feel like my island.

I really don't have a say in anything that happens there aside from having a slight variation in landmarks and their placement, plus being able to glamour the diff level of buildings. Inviting people to your Island is kind of pointless, everyone's looks the same and there is literally not one activity you could do together.

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

Riddle me this: For the love of little faery apples why did they put IS on the housing servers of all places? It's not like those servers had any spare capacity.

If IS was truly meant to be standalone why weren't they partitioned into their own cluster? I would like to think that Square's devops folks aren't that naive. Kinda beggars belief when you consider that XIV is reasonably stable compared to broader industry standards (which puts them head and shoulders above most of the gamesdev niche).

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Given what happened with the residential servers, I have a theory:

In discussions about instanced housing, I would state that they can't just switch over without impacting those homeowners somehow. If it weren't for the outdoor space where you do gardening, they could easily drop wards.

While it's not housing as we know it, I think IS was meant as a compromise of sorts that could potentially please those that simply wanted the place to take a break from everything. Let's be honest. Not everyone that owns a house even bothers to decorate it much. This checks off enough boxes for people and the activities are a bonus as well. (Between IS, my FC and two apartments, I'm satisfied. I might still try a housing lottery if something pops, but I'm not going to be upset if I never get something.)

I believe when they expanded the ward count last year, they accounted for the space to run IS. They definitely plan ahead as much as possible and likely have a lot of interesting things lined up for future updates.

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

That's an oversight and a lack of test coverage.

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This was 6.1 in a nutshell. So yeah.

I already own a house, but I never had enough gardening, so it satifisfied what I wanted. Plus the taking care of and feeding animals, having the mammets arounds, that its set on a chill tropical island, among other things are all pluses to me.

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Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

I went into islands with extremely low expectations, and was still somehow disappointed. It's completely soulless with even less depth than wow's garrisons. That alone is impressive. I mean ffs even the orchestrion is just the functionality of the one in the inn. It's like they went out of their way to make it as barebones as possible.

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Dear god no, Garrisons were an overpromised mistake.

Instead of getting capital cities in Warlrods of Draenor, like ya know what we have in Endwalker as the equvialent in FFXIV with Old Sharalyan or Radz-at-han, everyone just sat in their Garrisons. As those capital city features had to be scrapped in Warlords of Draenor for the sake of the Garrisons being a thing at launch. Imagine scrapping Radz-at-han or Old Sharalyan to make Island Sanctuaries be a thing at launch. Imagine.

Oh, and since everything was just inside your garrison like the mailbox or the auction house or whatever else, everyone felt trapped in their garrisons for the longest time.

One of the main features of garrisons that were promised was "You could set it in any of the leveling zones". Instead of, you know, the 1 spot for horde faction in Frostfire Ridge or the 1 spot for the alliance faction in Shadowmoon Valley.

Or hey remember the fact that they weren't joking when Garrisons, which were meant to be their equivalent of personal housing, was going to cost everyone a raid tier? They weren't joking. Imagine losing the first alliance raid tier because of Island Sanctuaries.

This is a weird one OP. Yoshida said i it many times, it is not housing nor there to act a substitue for it. So, no but this question is unnecessary in the first place if you had looked at the lodestone.
I voiced my opinion in a other thread already: not enough by far, island plays itself and such a thing in FF14 is a waste of time and resources.

Nope.

Honestly it just feels like another BSF/Eureka except as a DoL/H. I repeat whatever I did: get to max rank, pile up resources, try to attain profits whenever possible. Except I get to lock it so I get my personal space… to an extent. Sadly I can’t even afk in my own isle, boo.

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Originally Posted by Banriikku

This is a weird one OP. Yoshida said i it many times, it is not housing nor there to act a substitue for it. So, no but this question is unnecessary in the first place if you had looked at the lodestone.
I voiced my opinion in a other thread already: not enough by far, island plays itself and such a thing in FF14 is a waste of time and resources.

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I'd say it's less of a waste of time and resources than the Ultimates because of how few players will actually do the fights, let alone clear them. But that's me pointing out that there are bigger wastes of resources than IS.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

I'd say it's less of a waste of time and resources than the Ultimates because of how few players will actually do the fights, let alone clear them. But that's me pointing out that there are bigger wastes of resources than IS.

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Point taken. I know you are right if we are going to take only in consideration how many player play said content. But to be fair i wtached the world first for most Ultimate's and liked it as nobdoy knew whats up but thats my weird taste. I think Ultimate is also "prestige" like Mythic for WoW (yeah, i know i said the bad word). But IS is not entertaining after the start questline... atleast for me. Ultimate is still for me interesting content i consume in some way, IS is just click for a week, gather via clicking stuff for 20 min and then leave for a weak. Not very intersting or enganging in my opinion and after getting my glamour and mounts i will never touch it again. Ultimate i will try and consume in some way and damn i want these Tea weapon for my AST.

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Originally Posted by HollowedDoll

First of all, they told us this: "Island Sanctuary for those adventurers seeking a taste of the slow life."
So I'm thinking okay, chill retirement content, and yet here I am essentially doing unpaid labor for Tataru /s. Still, there is nothing chill about needing 50 diff materials and having to set up each and every day of the week in my workshops that run on a real 24h timer, a clock constantly ticking down is the opposite of slow for me.

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This is my feeling too. The island isn't remotely "slow life" when you're constantly having to put mind and effort into that complex spreadsheeting as basically the only way of getting decent experience, on top of having to constantly gather materials because you can't send the mammets out on any sort of material-specific specific gathering mission.

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Originally Posted by HollowedDoll

Another issue is there is really nowhere that is actually cozy, every landmark I've unlocked so far is filled with Mammets who ruin the atmosphere of even the locations that are nice, it doesn't feel like my island.

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This too. The biggest joke of it all is that if you read the descriptions, you're building all these things because the mammets like them and it will keep them working hard. You're literally, explicitly creating this whole town for their benefit rather than yours.

It feels like the devs totally lost sight of the original concept they set out to create. I can only imagine it happened by increments – "what activities on the island? How can players craft without having crafters levelled? We'll give them a team of craftsmen, but what makes them willing workers? Payment and motivation? Maybe we build facilities for them? Show they're enjoying themselves so the player isn't a slave driver? And that will give the player a goal to work towards. Solved! Plenty of activities for them upgrading all of this."

And so we arrived at Factory Simulator: Tropical Island edition.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

This is my feeling too. The island isn't remotely "slow life" when you're constantly having to put mind and effort into that complex spreadsheeting as basically the only way of getting decent experience, on top of having to constantly gather materials because you can't send the mammets out on any sort of material-specific specific gathering mission.




This too. The biggest joke of it all is that if you read the descriptions, you're building all these things because the mammets like them and it will keep them working hard. *You're literally, explicitly creating this whole town for their benefit rather than yours.*

It feels like the devs totally lost sight of the original concept they set out to create. I can only imagine it happened by increments – "what activities on the island? How can players craft without having crafters levelled? We'll give them a team of craftsmen, but what makes them willing workers? Payment and motivation? Maybe we build facilities for them? Show they're enjoying themselves so the player isn't a slave driver? And that will give the player a goal to work towards. Solved! Plenty of activities for them upgrading all of this."

And so we arrived at Factory Simulator: Tropical Island edition.

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This might possibly come across as offensive, and forgive me if I'm wrong but I feel like a potential reason could be the work culture in Japan for why the devs think this is in any way relaxing.

*
You're right though, personally I never looked at it from that view, but it makes sense in hindsight. I wouldn't have minded a windmill or a bathhouse or that tower, but I thought it'd be done because I want it.. and not filled with a bunch of robots. Also if the reason for this is so we aren't shown as a slave driver, then the implications are rather bad for Tataru who is essentially exploiting the WOL for profit.

Factories are literal WORK, it's just so incompatible with relaxation IMO.

What we were hoping for: Animal Crossing

What we got: Farmville

I started four days late, didn't grind, and I'm already Rank 8. Once you get most of the facilities built and the expeditions going, it's pretty easy to self run, and then you can set up the caretakers to keep the animals fed and the crops watered, too.

The only void that this filled from Housing that couldn't be replicated with apartments is Airships and Submarines. It's basically and outdoors version of that, with more transparency on the rewards, and direct gathering instead of buying from the market boards.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

First, I'll repeat what has been said over and over: Island Sanctuary is not a replacement/substitute for housing.

Just the same, it has a few of the features that players frequently mention when talking about why they want a house (gardening, larger private space, outdoor area, etc.).

With that in mind, we've had a week now to explore Island Sanctuary to see what we can do with it. Has Island Sanctuary satisfied at least part of your reasons for wanting a house?

If so, where did it "hit the spot"?

What does it still lack that you expect to get from a house?

What has been the overall impact on your desire to get a house?

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Honestly I'm not even sure what Island Sanctuaries are supposed to be other than a waste of development time and something most people will spend 2 days on and then never touch again. They're like WoW's garrisons only with even less engagement or benefit quite frankly. The content is boring, the buildings can only be placed on static plots so literally every island looks the same with nonexistent customization to it at all and to get any meaningful use out of said buildings you basically need to be a spreadsheet nerd to maximize your work orders.

Everything about it just feels like a waste of time (not even in the fun sense) and it just exacerbates my issues with housing and quite honestly my confidence in the game as a whole going forward.

It's 2022 and the excuses people make for this game having systems, graphics and gameplay that feels like its from 2007 are inexcusable.

There is absolutely no reason players in this game should not be able to have a house if they have the gil to afford one. This game single handedly carries SE's earnings quarter after quarter.. put some of the millions you make off the store into your ancient servers for once.

They should make housing instance and let us that have homes move them to the island.

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Originally Posted by underl0gic

Honestly I'm not even sure what Island Sanctuaries are supposed to be other than a waste of development time and something most people will spend 2 days on and then never touch again. They're like WoW's garrisons only with even less engagement or benefit quite frankly. The content is boring, the buildings can only be placed on static plots so literally every island looks the same with nonexistent customization to it at all and to get any meaningful use out of said buildings you basically need to be a spreadsheet nerd to maximize your work orders.

Everything about it just feels like a waste of time (not even in the fun sense) and it just exacerbates my issues with housing and quite honestly my confidence in the game as a whole going forward.

It's 2022 and the excuses people make for this game having systems, graphics and gameplay that feels like its from 2007 are inexcusable.

There is absolutely no reason players in this game should not be able to have a house if they have the gil to afford one. This game single handedly carries SE's earnings quarter after quarter.. put some of the millions you make off the store into your ancient servers for once.

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But they're indie company and had just a mere 9 years to fix fundamental game issues, how could you say that. Making band aid solutions like apartments and adding new wards every few years which get filled in a first roulette circle is totally legitimate way to fix the problems.

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Originally Posted by Chasingstars

Dear god no, Garrisons were an overpromised mistake.

Instead of getting capital cities in Warlrods of Draenor, like ya know what we have in Endwalker as the equvialent in FFXIV with Old Sharalyan or Radz-at-han, everyone just sat in their Garrisons. As those capital city features had to be scrapped in Warlords of Draenor for the sake of the Garrisons being a thing at launch. Imagine scrapping Radz-at-han or Old Sharalyan to make Island Sanctuaries be a thing at launch. Imagine.

Oh, and since everything was just inside your garrison like the mailbox or the auction house or whatever else, everyone felt trapped in their garrisons for the longest time.

One of the main features of garrisons that were promised was "You could set it in any of the leveling zones". Instead of, you know, the 1 spot for horde faction in Frostfire Ridge or the 1 spot for the alliance faction in Shadowmoon Valley.

Or hey remember the fact that they weren't joking when Garrisons, which were meant to be their equivalent of personal housing, was going to cost everyone a raid tier? They weren't joking. Imagine losing the first alliance raid tier because of Island Sanctuaries.

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I was there on launch night for WoD. Nobody could progress through the starting zone, because it had layers and layers of phasing and a buttload of cinematics all in one fairly small area and the servers choked. And awaiting anyone who got past that, the Garrisons were the exact same problem. A 20-minute quest line took four hours.

Even without the server problems, though, Warlords in general was a shell of broken promises and wasted potential. It's a big part of what drove me off WoW in the first place.

I haven't even unlocked IS yet.


I do have a medium house though so maybe this wasn't aimed at me.

This island has so much potential, I really hope they take advantage of it. A small garden and a house with the ability to grow what we want and use all the furniture in the house and on the island would be a huge first step. At least for me. Please don't waste all the potential this island has. Reminds me of the garrison in WoW, and boy did Blizzard screw that up big time.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

I was there on launch night for WoD. Nobody could progress through the starting zone, because it had layers and layers of phasing and a buttload of cinematics all in one fairly small area and the servers choked. And awaiting anyone who got past that, the Garrisons were the exact same problem. A 20-minute quest line took four hours.

Even without the server problems, though, Warlords in general was a shell of broken promises and wasted potential. It's a big part of what drove me off WoW in the first place.

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Yeah, WoD was awful, especially at launch. I was playing when the servers first went live. Not even 10 minutes later they crashed. lol My personal favorite was getting stuck on a flight path to my garrison (floating in the air just outside of it) and being unable to use my character, forcing me to either log off entirely or switch to an alt. It was all a bad omen, and I apparently hadn't realized it yet. If only I had known then what I know now.

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Originally Posted by Fhaerron

I haven't even unlocked IS yet.


I do have a medium house though so maybe this wasn't aimed at me.

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Check it out anyway :)

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

I was there on launch night for WoD. Nobody could progress through the starting zone, because it had layers and layers of phasing and a buttload of cinematics all in one fairly small area and the servers choked. And awaiting anyone who got past that, the Garrisons were the exact same problem. A 20-minute quest line took four hours.

Even without the server problems, though, Warlords in general was a shell of broken promises and wasted potential. It's a big part of what drove me off WoW in the first place.

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Ah man the six plus hours everyone horde side was trainwrecked at the start trying to click on a spyglass that was inoperable. Those were the days..

I finally unlocked and tried the island sanctuary and it was about what I expected out of it. It just isn't something that I will enjoy long term. It doesn't look like there will be much of any customization or anything so that itch will not get scratched in islands. It has no impact on my want for a house nor does it really do anything for me. I unlocked it, played it for an hour, and unfortunately will probably rarely if ever think about going back.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

First, I'll repeat what has been said over and over: Island Sanctuary is not a replacement/substitute for housing.

If so, where did it "hit the spot"?

What does it still lack that you expect to get from a house?

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It's a great place to hang out with my friends. Since it's more than 100% Public Access / 100% Closed I don't have to worry about people using it for things I'd prefer it not be (someone literally used my current venue as a studio to take pictures advertising ERP services on Twitter.). I don't really want to deal with gardening at my house, but enjoy island style gardening. I also like gathering to relax so it's a side benefit even if it's not something directly comparable with housing.

The limited number of people who can visit. It's a good place for more intimate gatherings to chat and/or wait for duty queues with friends, whereas my house is better for larger groups. Houses, and even apartments/FC rooms are better RP venues than the large island. The lack of customization and decoration; even if it's only landscaping the area in front of the cabin, is a major drawback.

If I didn't have a house and couldn't get one, I'd probably be satisfied with an island and apartment as the combo hits all the high points for me except for landscaping a yard.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

First, I'll repeat what has been said over and over: Island Sanctuary is not a replacement/substitute for housing.

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I don't understand how anyone ever thought otherwise. I saw Xeno arguing that it is housing because you can erect buildings where you want and customize their appearances. This is like saying that Diablo II is an MMO because you can gain experience and fight monsters in a multi-player setting. If you oversimplify game mechanics enough, you can describe two completely different games in the same way.

To put this into more detail, housing allows for a vast array of furnishings than can be placed at any available space on your property. You can also customize its appearance with a vast array of wallpapers. The Sanctuary, on the other hand, provides a very limited number of lots, all of which can be populated with a single building from a choice ranging from 0-5 options. Furthermore, these lots are in fixed locations. There are two sets of buildings whose appearance can be customized (the cozy cabin, and the hideaway buildings). Each has three options with an array of three appearances that you can pick from.

The Island Sanctuary has nothing to do with FFXIV housing. If anything, it's more closely related to the WoW Garrisons that they provided in WoD. The difference is that gathering resources to expand your Sanctuary is done within the Sanctuary itself rather than in the open world. I don't see how the Island Sanctuary would have an impact on my opinion with regard to FFXIV housing because it has nothing to do with it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ronduwil

I don't understand how anyone ever thought otherwise. I saw Xeno arguing that it is housing because you can erect buildings where you want and customize their appearances. This is like saying that Diablo II is an MMO because you can gain experience and fight monsters in a multi-player setting. If you oversimplify game mechanics enough, you can describe two completely different games in the same way.

To put this into more detail, housing allows for a vast array of furnishings than can be placed at any available space on your property. You can also customize its appearance with a vast array of wallpapers. The Sanctuary, on the other hand, provides a very limited number of lots, all of which can be populated with a single building from a choice ranging from 0-5 options. Furthermore, these lots are in fixed locations. There are two sets of buildings whose appearance can be customized (the cozy cabin, and the hideaway buildings). Each has three options with an array of three appearances that you can pick from.

The Island Sanctuary has nothing to do with FFXIV housing. If anything, it's more closely related to the WoW Garrisons that they provided in WoD. The difference is that gathering resources to expand your Sanctuary is done within the Sanctuary itself rather than in the open world. I don't see how the Island Sanctuary would have an impact on my opinion with regard to FFXIV housing because it has nothing to do with it.

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People love to craft theories and people love a theory, no matter how bad it is. Anyone that gave any amount of thought to this being Housing or a copy of a standalone game bamboozled themselves. I said it was going to be a browser game port at best and guess what people are calling it when they're mad about it. :rolleyes: Add to that the rabid desire to consume everything immediately on release.