The bar for Island Sanctuary and Criterion Dungeons are very high

For many people, myself included, Island Sanctuaries and Criterion Dungeons are make-or-break for this game.

Square Enix need to make them overwhelming successes or this game will truly reach its turning point and go the way of WoW.

SE has an extremely bad history with side systems and content. The first iteration of Diadem was so poor it was literally deleted from the game. Eureka was a hot pile of garbage on its first iteration. Bozja was frankly mediocre, outside of the raids.

And those are the "good" side systems that they've made. Stuff like Mahjong and Lords of Verminion are either delipidated or largely ignored by the wider community.

They have not been able to make a side system that the majority of the playerbase enjoys and engages in since Heavensward.

Island Sanctuary in particular is what many people are watching for. It needs to be perfect. The bar is high because the playerbase has hyped itself up to such high levels that a failure would be the straw that breaks the camel's back. A lot of the playerbase is already very dissatisfied, and Square Enix cannot have its main attraction be mediocre.

1. There needs to be a long term progression within Island Sanctuary, much like what you see in Stardew Valley. Regions and systems of the island should be unlocked by progressing through the system. This progression needs to be an at-your-own-pace system however. But there needs to be a long-term goal for players to work towards.

2. The customization UI needs to be beyond polished. It needs to be extremely easy to customize your island and decorate it the way you want to, beyond what we already have in housing. For example, players should be able to save and upload island layouts and share it with others.

3. The Island Sanctuary must have an incredible amount of graphical assets in addition to what we have in housing to truly allow for player creativity and freedom of expression. If it releases with like 3 choices of grass, 3 choices of tables, etc. it is going to be a failure.

4. Island Sanctuary should feed back into the main game by providing players with rewards like glamours or access to gardening.

Set my bar way low for Island Sanctuary, genuinely dont expect a whole lot from that. I am however hoping Criterion Dungeons will have decent variety or difficultly, also looking forward to new Deep Dungeon, whenever that comes out...

I feel like a lot of the bar for Island Sanctuary is because people are essentially expecting it to be housing, which I think is a dangerous mindset. A system that ties in gardening, with minions, glamour, crafting and gathering in itself is a very good and realistic expectation. I would like to imagine. I want to go out on a limb and estimate it could be tying in components seen with Ishgard Restoration, honestly. There's going to be heavy limitations on it, honestly. But I think if they're presenting at least a gesture in the direction to what is eluded here then I'll be happy with it, personally.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

I feel like a lot of the bar for Island Sanctuary is because people are essentially expecting it to be housing, which I think is a dangerous mindset.

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Indeed, though the complete radio silence about the system from the devs has not helped matters whatsoever. They hyped it up when it was first announced, and when people started hyping it up too much, they said to dial back our expectations... while not giving us any actual concrete information about what to expect from it to begin with.

The severe lack of communication regarding it and Criterion dungeons is going to be just as damaging to the final product as player's inflated expectations and hopes for them, honestly.

Nothing I've heard about island sanctuary has made it sound remotely interesting to me so my expectations for that are already pretty low
Suppose we'll see though

You're better off setting the bar low and get pleasantly surprised than getting disappointed with your expectations being too high.

My expectations are so low they're buried right now. It's sadly true that SE just cannot do side content well first time. I fully expect Criterion dungeons to be casual content filled with gimmicks with an obscure hard mode that is nothing like regular Savage dungeons at all. I expect Island Sanctuary to be a barebones small instanced room with very little to do until at least next expansion.

There's also the fact we haven't even heard a whisper of the relic and even then, quite frankly I'm not jumping with excitement at the thought of another Bozja style grind for a weapon I'll never glam that's pretty much useless for most of the expansion.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Island Sanctuary in particular is what many people are watching for. It needs to be perfect. The bar is high because the playerbase has hyped itself up to such high levels that a failure would be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

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Almost no one is hyping Island Sanctuary. That in itself is a problem, there's not much excitement for upcoming content.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I'm not jumping with excitement at the thought of another Bozja style grind for a weapon I'll never glam that's pretty much useless for most of the expansion.

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God, if we have yet another instanced zone for the relic chain, I am going to lose it.

They are not fun, and I say this as someone who liked Bozja! It is not fun being cut off from the rest of the game to progress a storyline and relic weapon, and while they tried to fix that a little bit with Bozja, it was still far better to just grind it inside because you also needed to max your rank up to continue into the next area once it released. It also isn't fun trying to help your friends who start the relic later than you, and they have to go through all that rank grinding just to be able to do the same areas as you. HW-style relics were the peak of relic design, honestly, and I really wish they would go back to it.

I'm so tired of instanced zones for the relic. Absolutely sick and tired of them. Just let me do stuff in the actual game and overworld for them, I am freaking begging you SE.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Almost no one is hyping Island Sanctuary. That in itself is a problem, there's not much excitement for upcoming content.

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You must have not met my friends then lol. Everyone I know is saying "Island Sanctuary will be the MMO Harvest Moon experience I've been waiting for!" When it's almost surely not going to be the case. People are overhyping Island Sanctuary a lot and I honestly feel bad for em. Cuz I don't really think it'll live up to the hype.

Like don't get me wrong, I bet it'll be good side content, but not to the extent people are expecting.

Well I sure hope those two things will be fun, I'm paying good money for this game afterall.

I'm willing to be surprised by em! :3

Island Sanctuaries are not make-or-break for me. I already know that owning a farm is not likely to interest me very much but I appreciate that they will interest a lot of other people.

I hope Criterion dungeons are worthwhile, but if they are not then we still have all of the content that we normally get so it's not really make-or-break either.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Bozja was frankly mediocre, outside of the raids.

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The critical engagements were good and a lot of them left the majority of people dead or wiped everyone entirely.

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They have not been able to make a side system that the majority of the playerbase enjoys and engages in since Heavensward.

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Eureka, Bozja, the firmament, ocean fishing, bard music, adventurer plates, crystalline conflict. But yes, most of it has just been improving existing systems, releasing new content for them or making systems that only a minority of people do such as ultimates.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

My expectations are so low they're buried right now. It's sadly true that SE just cannot do side content well first time. I fully expect Criterion dungeons to be casual content filled with gimmicks with an obscure hard mode that is nothing like regular Savage dungeons at all. I expect Island Sanctuary to be a barebones small instanced room with very little to do until at least next expansion.

There's also the fact we haven't even heard a whisper of the relic and even then, quite frankly I'm not jumping with excitement at the thought of another Bozja style grind for a weapon I'll never glam that's pretty much useless for most of the expansion.



Almost no one is hyping Island Sanctuary. That in itself is a problem, there's not much excitement for upcoming content.

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Yeah, fool me 50 times and I'm sick of it.
XIV (and XV) is the reason why I lost all hype for gaming lol.

They have been doing poor with nearly every major single side content they brought out.
The only thing I know that was really well-received and continued playing was POTD, which there
hasn't been a new on since SB. They try stuff and it keeps getting flopped lol.
At least PvP is doing better.

Also I personally thought the Island was some Coop like Stardew Valley where we work together to raise
a farm type thing. It woulda been really fun to work together with something like Ishgard Restoration.
The fact it is 'solo' even to me seems really boring. So rip a roo.

My bar for Island Sanctuaries are extremely low. It isn't something I personally want so unless SE does something spectacular with it it'll be 100% glossed over by me.

Criterion Dungeons I have interest in (actually decently hard dungeons finally?) but my expectations are also low.

I'm a healer main. I extremely doubt SE even knows what a heal check in a dungeon looks like at this point.

The lack of communication since the announcement of Island Sanctuaries will lead to player disappointment until further communication is shared
-- it will likely be a good thing if it offers some form of player housing (since there is no intention to fix current housing, only apply band-aids) or it will be something that is left in the dust because there isn't enough customization or anything in regards to player housing
Or it will be a giant farm/ garden plot (but with pets/ minions & various farm-like buildings) So folks who don't have a garden can just hop over to Island Sanctuary

That being said, there has not been any promise that there would be housing involved- just buildings you can add.
We'll see more in a future livestream that involves screens & further details to help curb our expectations (whether it's hyped up or not)

My bar for Island Sanctuary is set to be extremely low at the moment. They did tell us to not expect too much from Island Sanctuary as this isn't a game as specialized as Harvest Moon itself.

More realistically though, my expectations have been shot through the floor after the Hrothgar hairstyle incident. It has never recovered since. I'm pretty sure they'll do fine though, since Island Sanctuary is a piece of content many players are expecting.
... Then again the housing issue with the lottery did happen recently...

My bar for Criterion dungeons have been set extremely low after they told healers to go play Ultimate (1% content). As a result, I'm not expecting the healing difficulty to be rough and it's still most likely going to be "press Glare / Dosis / Malefic / Broil" like every other dungeon. It will just most likely have a bit more mechanics than usual for the DPS and tanks to have fun... maybe slightly less level sync. In short... Nothing new.

Why do you want to set yourself up for disappointment like that?
Hyping up two pieces of content we basically know nothing about aside from their names....

Like, reading through some replies, some people really seem to believe those dungeons will be hard, which is not something they ever said. They just said it will have varying difficulty depending how many players are in.
And people thinking Island Sanctuary will be like Stardew Valley/Animal Crossing, when it sounds like it will be more like a cute XIV's version of WoW garrisons.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

My bar for Criterion dungeons have been set extremely low after they told healers to go play Ultimate (1% content). As a result, I'm not expecting the healing difficulty to be rough and it's still most likely going to be "press Glare / Dosis / Malefic / Broil" like every other dungeon. It will just most likely have a bit more mechanics than usual for the DPS and tanks to have fun... maybe slightly less level sync. In short... Nothing new.

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When they said it was 1-4 players, that pretty much made me think that there was no way healing was going to be hard in it; if it's solo it's not going to require a healer at all, and I can't imagine they'd want to scale it to where a healer is required... so yet another piece of content where healers are sidelined. I'd love to be proven wrong though, but I'm not optimistic for them.

I'm expecting Island sanctuary to flop on arrival. SE's side content has been either "good idea but terribly flawed" such as diadem and bozja or "Terribly flawed but they locked behind valuable rewards behind it" such as eureka
Because the developers have been completely silent on what's going to be in it- island sanctuary is in a schodingers box scenario. Its good or bad until its open and any sane person can tell its gonna be dead anyway because its been too long since the experiment started.

Criterion dungeons are a bit harder to gauge but at the very least its highly unlikely they will offer any fun for healers given its explicitly designed for 1-4 players and SE doesn't have a clue on what a heal check is.
Chances are high though that it will fail its other basic task of offering replay value or rewards worth a damn too. Unreal for example doesn't offer anything worthwhile if you don't like the mounts for being lazy copy/pastes because you cant see most accessories.
Most likely they will be regular dungeons but tuned towards OG pharos sirius which should be the minimum standard for dungeons at level caps. Yet still fail to entertain tanks/healers because they don't matter to SE.

Kupo.. I don't always dungeon, but when I do, I dungeon deep. Kupo <3 lol :cool:

As someone that is fairly new to the game but with a background of many many years in this game, I am new to the game in that I have only been playing for a year, but my wife has been playing for years. <her character has a tattoo> She played through the really really bad times and yet she is still here.. She understands it's a game, things go wrong, they get fixed, sometimes they don't but never once in the many years we have talked about this game has she just thrown SE under the bus like some of you do. It's a game.

Let me state that I am amused at the people and what their expectations are for 12-40 dollars per month. It's a game...

For anyone that works for SE that might be reading this.. I congratulate you on your hard work. Yes, there are things I would LOVE to change, but understand from a business decision and new content, bugs and such, these won't happen right away.. but my wife and I will continue to pay for the max subscription with all retainers, the companion app for both of us to enjoy this game because we understand one point many people fail for remember. It's a game.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

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I think you need to seriously sit back and think about how much of yourself you're investing into this. it's not healthy.

There isn't anything unhealthy about providing feedback towards a game on the official forum for the game in question when...that is exactly what both the development team and customer support actively encourage. Whether they even read what is posted here is another matter entirely, though.

And those expectations will not be met no matter what they do. There's too much hype.

Well, it should be hard for them to screw up the Deep Dungeon they announced (supposedly anyway, I heard they did from a friend). Like at worst, it'll just be another HoH or something, which would still be tolerable at least if dull. I hope the people who keep saying Island Sanctuary's going to be instanced housing and like Animal Crossing/Harvest Moon or w/e aren't too disappointed. My expectations have swiftly become nonexistent after the director said not to expect much out of it, not to mention the complete silence surrounding it since. Frankly I'm not even sure it'll be functional on release at this point, I think they're keeping quiet about it because they're having trouble getting it to work properly. And I think anyone expecting Criterion dungeons to be anything more than maybe a couple new mechanics at most tossed in, maybe with a little more outgoing damage, is probably setting themselves up for disappointment.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

There isn't anything unhealthy about providing feedback towards a game on the official forum for the game in question when...that is exactly what both the development team and customer support actively encourage. Whether they even read what is posted here is another matter entirely, though.

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Umm I don't think Skiros' feedback matters much here as it doesn't really address anything the devs said. We know scarily little about Island Sanctuary which naturally leads people to drawing their own visions of what it should be. Ultimately all that OP written has little grounding in reality and is merely a list of things that people started to imagine. And it's pretty much pointless because nature doesn't live up to hype. No matter what SE releases at this point it will be impossible to match the dream version within player's mind. Heck OP's suggestions are impossible from the get go as what he describes could easily be standalone game and not just one of side activities.

My expectation for Island Sanctuary is along the lines of a beast tribe quest or Doma. As in “a building is going to go here, but you get to pick which flowers are next to it.”

Probably more akin to the wedding chapel, actually.

I expect it to be exactly what they said it to be and nothing more- though I agree they should say straight out “it will not be instanced housing” or “we really hope it can be instanced housing and we are figuring out the kinks now, so it might not be”

The devs need to do more to quell speculation since it just leads to people being disappointed. I realize that is on us players, but the devs surely must be aware what people are expecting/hoping. Better to be direct.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

1. There needs to be a long term progression within Island Sanctuary, much like what you see in Stardew Valley. Regions and systems of the island should be unlocked by progressing through the system. This progression needs to be an at-your-own-pace system however. But there needs to be a long-term goal for players to work towards.

2. The customization UI needs to be beyond polished. It needs to be extremely easy to customize your island and decorate it the way you want to, beyond what we already have in housing. For example, players should be able to save and upload island layouts and share it with others.

3. The Island Sanctuary must have an incredible amount of graphical assets in addition to what we have in housing to truly allow for player creativity and freedom of expression. If it releases with like 3 choices of grass, 3 choices of tables, etc. it is going to be a failure.

4. Island Sanctuary should feed back into the main game by providing players with rewards like glamours or access to gardening.

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this sounds exactly like the opposite of what the developers said to do. Like you literally thought of every part of their announcement asking you NOT to expect something like stardew valley.. and added in all the unfounded rumors people are circulated... and then made THAT your bar.


Could you not?

Given that it's meant to be a key feature for the expansion itself, telling people not to get excited is a major red flag. Instead they should be taking note of what people are expecting and then try to include as many of the desired features as realistically possible.

Especially since we're meant to be entering a bright new era for the game itself...

Just want somewhere to show off my pets

I can already see the front page of the forum complaining it’s not instanced housing or animal sanctuary or isn’t what they’d convinced themselves it was goi g to be despite numerous attempts by devs to temper expectations and never claiming it to be anything other than what it is.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Given that it's meant to be a key feature for the expansion itself, telling people not to get excited is a major red flag. Instead they should be taking note of what people are expecting and then try to include as many of the desired features as realistically possible.

Especially since we're meant to be entering a bright new era for the game itself...

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No, just no. Maybe it's my fault being too tame. But I didn't read it as "don't be excited for it" and more of "keep your expectations in check". Because that's what OP's first post is. Large expectations crossing the unrealistic territory. Building up hype by the community never, ever ended up well for any game no matter how much the dev team wanted to match the player's desire. It's pretty realistic to say we're not gettin an entire separate game with this function. We're not getting Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing or whatever mix of Farming sims we get out there in that feature.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

For many people, myself included, Island Sanctuaries and Criterion Dungeons are make-or-break for this game.

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Why? We know almost nothing about how either of those will work, so there is no sane reason to assume that they will matter all that much.

Wow, setting yourself up for disappointment early.

If the game is so bad right now that you need a new feature to cure cancer and solve world hunger, then maybe you should have stopped playing already.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Why? We know almost nothing about how either of those will work, so there is no sane reason to assume that they will matter all that much.

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1. Job design: one need only see the dps forums and healer forums to find people quitting in large numbers. The game is bleeding healers and a lot of samurai have just left their job.
2. Lack of repeatable content coupled with delays: There's simply nothing to do at level cap if you are midcore or casual that cant be completed in a couple of hours.
-SE dropped the ball AGAIN with not introducing relic in 6.0
-Unreal's rewards are lackluster
-The extremes so far do not deserve the title they are so undertuned
-No deep dungeon either.
-Lack of none savage challenging content: Not everyone has the time for a static and if you are a healer or tank, then you literally dont get loot until a month into savage unless pug and rng shine on you
3. Story quality has gone down this expansion with poor pacing and plot holes galore. New story is a repeat of skalla. Many expressed concern over the new arc being "a battle of values" when not everyone is on board with the current values in addition to yoshidas confusion over Venat's actions being seen as questionable and his surprise at emet selch being popular for being very well written

These 3 together make the bulk of ff14s gameplay loop and right now its not in a good place for a lot of people. Can it get better? Yes. But the signs are concerning.

"Going the way of WoW" would mean actually having a good amount of challenging content to partake in, I'd love for it to do that.

I'm hoping that criterion dungeons are something that I can queue into and get done and not a "watch a video and memorize it before even considering joining a party" affair.

I've been saying for a while now that there's no way Island Sanctuary will ever live up to the monumental expectations people are heaping on it.

Weren't we already told to lower our expectations for IS?

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Instead they should be taking note of what people are expecting and then try to include as many of the desired features as realistically possible..

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lol they haven't done that since the ARR reboot and even then it was negligible.