Island Sanctuary Critique

Gave it over it a week from when I started and I'm just gonna sum it up. I'll probably list all of it out of order as it comes to mind.

And for those curious as to what my experience with my IS is at so far, I am currently rank 7 and I've spent around 6-8 hours at most on it. Feel free to judge me for that I guess.

Minor

• The sprint button should be a toggle like it is in pvp. You can spam the button to always be sprinting anyways. And yes, even though you can ride your mount everywhere this is still relevant since sometimes you end up gathering between nodes that are really close together and therefore don't want to bother mounting between them.
• Would be nice if timers for IS buildings in construction were in the timers window of the game. You could also put granary expeditions and workshop agendas there too possibly.
• Slight tweaks to the UI. I don't think the UI is the worst thing ever but I feel like it would be just a bit better if it was something like this mock up. Or maybe we could have the option to change to something like the mock up by dragging the corner of the current UI and changing between them.

https://i.imgur.com/eiy0Sd0.png

Major
Everything major for the most part falls under one single thought. The lack of uniqueness and diversity within IS.

• Every island's geography and resource locations are exactly the same. Hence why a few days after IS was released there were already resource maps and even rare creature maps.
• IS progression is linear. Unless you're one of those crazy people that grinds collecting resources for 10 experience each you're essentially stuck with building everything you can at each level and then doing whatever you prefer with your granary, workshop, pasture and garden. That's not engaging content, that's a daily. Which facilities you can build are also restricted. For example at rank 7 I have 5 facility plots, but the game forces me to build 3 Workshops and 2 Granaries. I cannot have any other combination of them. Landmarks are a bit similar as while you can build any number of each landmarks on your landmark plot, they all have the same effect of increasing the materials gathered in your granary and the groove cap of your workshop.
• IS customization is limited. I don't really think I need to explain that the only options for customizing are your landmarks and changing between whether your island looks like the older versions of itself or not.
• All of this comes together to make the ability to visit other people's islands really redundant. It doesn't really have anything over apartments or housing for social reasons. You can hang out with someone while they handle their business on the island that's about it. You can't even gather the generic nodes on someone else's island, which I feel is a shame since at the least you could potentially have gathering parties. There's a lot of lost potential really.

For me the issue is that it becomes a daily or several days I guess if you let your mammets do the job.
You go to your island, set everything up to get yourself the currency and get on with your day.
I tried to find something to do there in between q's, but there really doesn't seem to be anything except to wait for rare mobs or gather until i'm rank 10.
After several weeks/months when I have all the rewards why go back?
I doubt your animals will try to escape if you don't go there for several weeks :p

For me, Island Sanctuary is fine. It does what it was supposed to be, and if you don't zerg rush it, and instead take it slowly and with tempered expectations, it honestly becomes a cute piece of content. I share some of the concerns that OP listed, and I think some are fairly easy to solve, or at least the dev team should have had some foresight.

Because one thing is saying "Oh this content isn't meant for you to zerg it", and another is designing something so obviously prone to zerging:
- OP stated the island's geography and resources were the same. Geography being the same is fine to save on dev time, but making it be random would allow for greater exploration.
- Linear progression makes predictable and prone to zerging. There are A LOT of people that see a progress\level bar and do their utmost to fill it. If the island were developped somewhat like Terraria or Minecraft where you don't have this progress bar, and instead gathered materials to build things (just like the crafting menu, actually), it'd honestly have been better because it encouraged exploration and wouldn't have such a focus on a "levelling" system.

Other than that,
- A lot of the nodes are not as intuitive. Though this might just be me, but some nodes look same-y until you're reeeeeally familiar with them. And in a randomized scenario, it'd be even worse. Examples include the clay and stone nodes, the metal nodes or the thin trees for logs.
- There needs to be a bit more to the facilities. I get that this is a new content, but it's the perfect opportunity for, in the future, there to be other stuff than specifically X Workshops and Y Granaries.
- Landmarks should not be so limited early on. It's fine if you want specific blueprints as we progress, but only two at the start is very noticeably barebones. We could repurpose some models from Housing's Outdoor Furnishings and apply it here. That broken turret we got this patch is a good start.
- It'd be cool to have other stuff in the future, such as a rudimentary form of treasure maps (even if it's just the chests from bunny fates with additional materials inside) or other minigames. You know, stuff that makes the island more than "your hub and the nodes you slap for items".
- Just make sprint a toggle, it's fine. It's not the sort of content we wouldn't be running around anyway, there's no point in a refreshable timer.
- Maybe something for guests to do. In housing, guests can leave messages or water our plants. Some people might want to pitch in, who knows. Just don't make it a singular "Oh you came to visit, but really it's just an island we take photos in and is literally the same for everyone so it doesn't matter if it's on yours or mine... weeee...".

All around cool concept, decent enough execution, some stuff needs ironing out. I hope that there's more that gets added to this, because it is frankly really interesting.

I wish you could name your Island ._.

It will be continued content, so we can expect more things in the future.
All island's are also the same because if not you would have a lot more people complain about having a "bad" island and they would "reroll" the heck out of it until the get the "perfect" island.
Beside that, it is every player's own fault to search for spawn locations and other stuff. You could just not look up the shiny spawn's or best farm route's and explore it by yourself.

The base of IS gives hope for so much more and interesting things to day.
Maybe we even get the long awaited instanced housing at a higher level.

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Originally Posted by Curisu

It will be continued content, so we can expect more things in the future.
All island's are also the same because if not you would have a lot more people complain about having a "bad" island and they would "reroll" the heck out of it until the get the "perfect" island.
Beside that, it is every player's own fault to search for spawn locations and other stuff. You could just not look up the shiny spawn's or best farm route's and explore it by yourself.

The base of IS gives hope for so much more and interesting things to day.
Maybe we even get the long awaited instanced housing at a higher level.

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Please no to instanced housing until they have their own servers. I'm terrified to imagine the congestion if they added that into IS which is already sharing space with ward housing interiors and apartments.

The island is not casual enough. We are forced to give Mammets days off, great. But If you have any animals in your pasture, you cannot take a day off. I had all my animals at Gleeful status. This was Wednesday morning; I returned to my Island to collect and feed Thursday evening (approximaly 36 hours later); all my animals were Hostile. The animals go from full to starving in 24 hours, causing happiness loss if you do not log in every day. This was supposed to be casual content, but it is playing more as a Mobile game that needs you to check 2-3 each day.
I can pre-schedule the workshop for a week, let me pre-schedule feeding, leavings collecting, crop watering, and harvesting for a week too. That would make this, truly causal content.

Customization is my biggest gripe. I'd like to be able to customize it quite a bit more to make it my own, also not some expert crafts required either. If they do release customization, and it's all for crafters or big spenders, I will feel left out. It would be like playing a free to play game, and all the good stuff is in the cash shop. For example, I'd like to, if the mammets are staying, be able to customize their look. More building themes, island themes, new landmarks, further island expansions, etc..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ChameleonMS

The island is not casual enough. We are forced to give Mammets days off, great. But If you have any animals in your pasture, you cannot take a day off. I had all my animals at Gleeful status. This was Wednesday morning; I returned to my Island to collect and feed Thursday evening (approximaly 36 hours later); all my animals were Hostile. The animals go from full to starving in 24 hours, causing happiness loss if you do not log in every day. This was supposed to be casual content, but it is playing more as a Mobile game that needs you to check 2-3 each day.
I can pre-schedule the workshop for a week, let me pre-schedule feeding, leavings collecting, crop watering, and harvesting for a week too. That would make this, truly causal content.

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upgrading pasture to the max allows you to let mammets take care of the animals for you

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Originally Posted by Duskane

upgrading pasture to the max allows you to let mammets take care of the animals for you

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Right. Both the pasture and cropland can be automated by paying your mammets once fully upgraded. You can even buy seeds from the mammet if you don't want to gather them personally.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

Right. Both the pasture and cropland can be automated by paying your mammets once fully upgraded. You can even buy seeds from the mammet if you don't want to gather them personally.

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As far as I've seen the seed you can buy can not be gathered.
Or at least I've never found them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Curisu

As far as I've seen the seed you can buy can not be gathered.
Or at least I've never found them.

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I haven't actually looked into it aside from reading the tutorial on it, so I didn't look at the inventory. If that's the case then those must be rare seeds? I've been saving my money for the last expansion after finishing up everywhere else.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

I haven't actually looked into it aside from reading the tutorial on it, so I didn't look at the inventory. If that's the case then those must be rare seeds? I've been saving my money for the last expansion after finishing up everywhere else.

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https://i.imgur.com/cckZPG3.png

Not entirely sure if they're rare. I haven't been able to harvest my garden yet since I unlocked them so I have no idea what the profit margin on them is but considering they're 2 cowries each it should be decent even if you're just selling them raw without using them in your workshop.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Duskane

upgrading pasture to the max allows you to let mammets take care of the animals for you

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Thanks for the clarification, looking forward to getting to IS level 10 then when my IS can truly become Casual content where I am supposed to take my time with it. That still means the island is not casual enough, as this feature is locked behind max rank and you the pasture right away. The auto maintenance feature should be available as soon as the feature (pasture/crops) is unlocked.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ChameleonMS

Thanks for the clarification, looking forward to getting to IS level 10 then when my IS can truly become Casual content where I am supposed to take my time with it. That still means the island is not casual enough, as this feature is locked behind max rank and you the pasture right away. The auto maintenance feature should be available as soon as the feature (pasture/crops) is unlocked.

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you can fully upgrade the pasture at rank 7

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

https://i.imgur.com/cckZPG3.png

Not entirely sure if they're rare. I haven't been able to harvest my garden yet since I unlocked them so I have no idea what the profit margin on them is but considering they're 2 cowries each it should be decent even if you're just selling them raw without using them in your workshop.

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Maybe not "rare" necessarily, but have to buy them from the mammet regardless it looks like. I haven't seen those either. They are definitely fairly cheap at 2.