The bar for Island Sanctuary and Criterion Dungeons are very high

[IckeDerTyp]

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

[Jeeqbit]

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.

Bozja was frankly mediocre, outside of the raids.

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

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

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.

[Jybril]

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.

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.

[ASkellington]

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.

[HeyMcFly]

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)

[AnotherPerson]

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.

[Garnix]

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.

[Nizzi]

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.

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.

[Recon1o6]

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.

[Doc_Seraph]

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