Island Reflections

Oh! Just thought it would be useful if the FF XIV companion app could interact with the island so you can set things from there like the workshop schedule. People say the island feels like a mobile game anyways, may as well give us that convenience. I almost never use the app because you can't even dispatch retainer ventures using it.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Personally, I'm happier making it a relaxing experience. Some days I want to play the workshop game, some I don't. if I can make the rest days match the days I'm not in the mood, great. If not, I lose a day of production. Not a big deal because I don't need those rewards yesterday.

You might want to watch Josh Strife Hayes' video about how players have stripped the fun out of games by striving for too much efficiency. When the fun is gone, all you're left with is another job and playing the game ends up pointless.

If you don't enjoy the workshop mini-game, don't play it. That simple. If you don't like any of the other activities on the Island, don't do those either. It's dumb to make yourself miserable over a few virtual pixel vanity rewards that aren't required to play the rest of the game.

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Don't get me wrong, I do like and enjoy IS, however there are undeniably plenty of shortcomings, especially when it comes to replay value, execution of "relaxing experience" and lack of promised customization.

At lower ranks, you get to build and upgrade new buildings, capture animals and so on. On rank 10, you get nothing new (except flight, which imo ruins all immersivity that was left). No mastery system, where you get X and Y for re-leveling, so gathering is worthless even more. In other words, IS "endgame" is much more emptier than lower ranks.

I indeed do watch Josh quite often, but the thing about workshop is that it's simply annoying to work with. I find something with good supply and demand in it's menu -> close menu -> open recipe menu -> find out it's 6 hours, so it won't fit into my schedule -> close menu -> back to supply and demand menu. Repeat 20+ times. Screw these menu shenanigans, I'll just use calculator, even though I like the management simulator.

Good for you that you don't mind that you missed a day in workshop, but game encourages you not to because of Groove. Yep, there's mechanic to make sure you don't relax and makes sure you use all production days. Not really a "relaxed experience", is it?

At last, stop telling people not to do workshop. It's the main thing on the island. Every single activity eventually ends up feeding workshop. Gathering, granary, pasture and cropland, all of this is connected to workshop. Workshop does not revolve around island, whole island revolves around workshop. If you don't like it, you might as well don't do IS as a whole.

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Originally Posted by OperaMorgana

to me the biggest MEH is that mountain, it takes like 1/4 of the map maybe? and for what? 2 spots for gathering? its a big waste of space, i hope they will implements tunnels or cave inside it....AND PLEASE LET ME BUILD A COVE FOR THOSE ROBOTS im sick of having them all around me....

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IS 2.0: An Island Reborn - turns out it was volcano all along and these shitty mammets burned in lava when it erupted. Now the real relaxing experience comes.

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Originally Posted by Xavier_Firbold

You really are a scourge to this forum.

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Only because people like to project or have thin skin about contrary thoughts. :p Go bother someone that cares and let folks discuss the island and not get into petty nonsense.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Oh! Just thought it would be useful if the FF XIV companion app could interact with the island so you can set things from there like the workshop schedule. People say the island feels like a mobile game anyways, may as well give us that convenience. I almost never use the app because you can't even dispatch retainer ventures using it.

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This definitely would make the app a lot more useful. Now its just an offline material selling assistant.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

Only because people like to project or have thin skin about contrary thoughts. :p Go bother someone that cares and let folks discuss the island and not get into petty nonsense.

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You complaining about people having thin skin to contrary thoughts is perhaps the most hypocritical thing I think I have ever seen anyone write.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Oh! Just thought it would be useful if the FF XIV companion app could interact with the island so you can set things from there like the workshop schedule. People say the island feels like a mobile game anyways, may as well give us that convenience. I almost never use the app because you can't even dispatch retainer ventures using it.

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There's an old mmo, Jade Dynasty but it had other names. It had a farming simulator where you planted seeds, tended to weeds over a few days and harvested crops. But friends could plant in your garden and harvest as well when you weren't using it. It was a bare bones mini game and it feels like IS could honestly be played the same way at times.

https://i.postimg.cc/qvq4rHxm/j.jpg

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

I'm not the one who's angry here. I'm writing things very plainly. I've clearly struck a nerve. You're the one who wasn't ready for an answer.

If you have to play to know, then just do it, but you've already psyched yourself up for disappointment, so go be disappointed. I don't care either way. Nobody does.

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nah, i was so relaxed i gave my last answer and went to sleep. You, on the other hand, seem desperate for attention. What is it, little one? Couldn't make anyone mad at you today?

I feel like Island Sanctuaries are still a great idea, and there's a solid enough foundation there. It just needs more customization, I think. Maybe some way to control the weather and overall "look" of the island, or just being able to change out the buildings and whatnot. Being able to let your minions roam around is just SUPER awesome, though. Might be cool to be able to do something similar for mounts?

Completely unrelated though; if the original Costa del Sol didn't exist, I think that would've actually been a great name for the place.

I got to rank 9 and I feel like I've seen enough to form an opinion on it.

Where exactly does the "hideaway paradise" part comes in? So far it has been a sweatshop simulator where its just another daily/weekly task that I have to do if I want to keep up.

None of the buildings feels like it belongs to me, every landmark even after completed has a bunch of robots jumping around as a constant reminder that this isn't your island. Like some people said here, it feels like a factory rather than a home or something an adventurer would go to when they want to take a break from the world's troubles.
Granaries don't bring nearly enough resources to replace or serve as an alternative to the tedious manual gathering, if you want to keep up your workshop schedule, especially once you get 3 workshops running, you have to go out and gather one item at a time. From rank 1 to 10 you'll be there getting 30~50 rocks, seeds, fish or logs. I don't feel like I progressed at all from the moment I set foot in the island to here where I'm nearly done with everything unlocked.

If I was the developer in charge I'd put less focus on grinding cowries and more on social and customizable elements, even changing the color of the buildings or where to place buildings would go a long way. Let friends help gather stuff on your island or feed the animals.

The foundation is there but honestly, if the next IS update is simply just another set of landmarks and more glamour locked behind a 10k cowrie grind, or god forbid another island where you have to do everything all over again this content will probably be going the way of old Diadem pretty fast.

Island Sanctuary starts off great and looks amazing and I think they're were actually on to something, but ended up designing backwards.

It feels like the developers started off by making an amazing looking island, then thought to themselves "players won't do this unless we reward them". So they added a vendor with a list of rewards. Then they needed a way to make us grind for those rewards, so they developed their robot factory system where we could set up an industrial island to produce the required currency. And they called it a day there.

They're so off the mark. I wasn't even expecting lots of rewards from this, I just wanted it to be fun. It feels like "How can we make this lots of fun?" wasn't even the focus, just the practicalities of reward and grind and the entire island designed around that structure. Where's the minigames, customization, fun interactions?

Im going to come out and say it……the island is quite ugly.
I don’t know, the foliage textures seem of less quality?
Its very rocky and the plants you gather are unappealing..
The colours just don’t feel very soothing…the light and ambiance is very boring.
I have no idea how to explain it. Id rather chill around in Central Shroud or something.

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Originally Posted by SassyAssassin

Im going to come out and say it……the island is quite ugly.
I don’t know, the foliage textures seem of less quality?
Its very rocky and the plants you gather are unappealing..
The colours just don’t feel very soothing…the light and ambiance is very boring.
I have no idea how to explain it. Id rather chill around in Central Shroud or something.

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I don't think that the island is ugly, but I also don't find the ambient soothing at all either, even if I'm just taking screenshots.

The way we gather sure don't help too. It's stressful, unlike actual gathering for me.

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Originally Posted by Freeflare

It's best description I've heard thus far was 'Animal Crossing as made by someone who doesn't understand Animal Crossing', and it fits.

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this 100% - whoever thought Tom Nook's currency simulator was a better option than stardew valley or Animal Crossing needs to go and play these games.
Or someone tried to describe to the devs how animal crossing works & all the devs heard was "you rack up currency/ pay debt" - they tuned out the villagers, npc encounters, island customization & events- basically everything that made animal crossing special

Or they said 'we can start small and go from there' but we'll see.

It's obvious island sanctuary isn't our sanctuary, but the sanctuary yoshi-p wants you to have whether you like it or not at the moment.

Hopefully, we'll get more content regarding the island sanct. - such as different biomes, actual building customization, seasonal changes like winter, fall, summer, spring, inviting npcs to interact with, mini games, treasure hunting/ scavenging, new items to work towards, instanced housing that works just like ward housing- I personally think that We WON'T see anything remotely close to AC because this is square enix; the small indie company. Next expac island sanct. will likely be abandoned content like every other side content they do.

Mabinogi had something similar to this. You expanded your land as you gained experience, and you had utility items you could build/place wherever you wanted in a grid-based system. Heck, you could even sing/play instruments to the crops you planted to make them grow faster if you were ranked high enough in those skills. If it wasn't run by Nexon and had awful awful micro-transactions then I would've tolerated the time-gating mechanics it had. Granted, the game is over a decade old and they've had a long time to improve on it, and Island Paradise is really just barebones. Hopefully they add more features and you'll actually be able to place items like housing. The drawback for me is you have to point and click to register every single action which can be tedious even 2 min. in for me. I think the dev team should look at games like Mabinogi for ideas. They could provide skills/actions you can hotbar for recreation, but also have cross interactions with different classes of objects. You don't HAVE to sing to your plants, but that makes the experience so much more amusing and worthwhile when you're given the option to. Just a suggestion.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

It feels like "How can we make this lots of fun?" wasn't even the focus

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That might be the actual underlying problem here, really.

In other portions of the game, too.

I had fun, and I'm still having fun.
Honestly I'm having more fun with it then grinding for EX mounts or hunting the last few cards I have left.

Course, I'm also an odd cat.