Sanctuary Island - Housing Hope or Doman Enclave 2.0?

[Rhus]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that remembers that we were supposed to get "player run farms" in ShB...

Yea I remember that and honestly feel like I’m alone in it lol I mention it and nobody believes it. Again glad to see others who recall it being a point from the shb tours.
As for it having housing, if it did we’d know by now. No way they keep that secret till launch with current housing. No way they release new wards and districts and reshuffle wards and do a lottery system if they’re just going to give us all an instanced house a few weeks/months later. The time and money irl would be wasted. We knew ishgard was coming in shb and it opened in 6.1. Yet ppl think they’re hiding housing weeks before the patch release? Please!

[Shougun]

I don't think Islands will be made to be as conservative and useless as possible, because IMHO in FFXIV isolated content has its worth. Gardening and FC house vehicular ventures can obtain scarce things for the MB. Zadnor has some buyable hairstyles which net a lot of gil. Eureka is generous with its lockboxes, I only finished Anemos and getting sellable demimateria netted me nice, small helpings of money. Treasure Maps are extremely profitable, if only when lucky. Stuff like that.

Garrisons in WoW were great if you hated professions, there was a farm you could have in Halfhill, Valley of the Four Winds in MoP which you could grow profession materials on. Honestly as someone who dislikes crafting and gathering in games... I'll take Island Sanctuaries with gladness if they'll be similar to these content packs. Might create an outcry from DoL/DoH mains I guess.

You're right- they have made semi-islands before that had value outside of themselves, hopefully they are going to do similar (if not better) than those other examples. Personally I think, especially thinking the long game plan, having this system introduced semi-early (not level 90 lol), constantly updating it, and giving it continuous intrigue / value, could be a really nice side feature to the game.

I am hopeful it's going to release well enough that they feel encouraged to continue to work on it, and particularly that they were adventurous enough that it doesn't feel like someone was afraid to jump in the water but wanted to make ocean content. I don't think it has to be a requirement to do MSQ lol, but I do like and hope that it is capable of being a substantial companion. Naturally some of that substantial-ness will come from updates (which is why I hope they didn't go at it with too much reticence / caution that it's release is meek, like I referenced Blue came out of the gate very meek and cautious and it greatly impacted the initial impression, myself included, even if it wasn't incredible gameplay design if it had came out swinging harder I feel more people would have bought into the idea of it being limited but it shot itself in the foot aggressively at release- hopefully the Island isn't going to do that lol).

Genuinely want the content to do well.

Yea I remember that and honestly feel like I’m alone in it lol I mention it and nobody believes it. Again glad to see others who recall it being a point from the shb tours.
As for it having housing, if it did we’d know by now. No way they keep that secret till launch with current housing. No way they release new wards and districts and reshuffle wards and do a lottery system if they’re just going to give us all an instanced house a few weeks/months later. The time and money irl would be wasted. We knew ishgard was coming in shb and it opened in 6.1. Yet ppl think they’re hiding housing weeks before the patch release? Please!

The concept art we've seen on the systems only make me more excited. To be honest the concept arts have me more excited than anything we've heard. Maybe because we've barely heard anything lol, but the concept art is like.... OMG.. PLEASE ACHIEVE WHAT I'M SEEING.

I can't find the first one we saw LONG time ago, but everyone knows this one:



Which has insane potential. Farms, minions, mounts, chocobo specific content maybe? (or in the future, yes please), buildings..., mountains, oceans....? WEEEEE!!!!!


One major desire, without knowing much about the system 'nice'.. lol, as it sounds like they're using node based architecture (help place buildings logically, and probably reduce memory requirements)- is that perhaps we can get some different arrangements then. Like if it's relatively rigid nodes that we might be able to earn different node arrangements.
For example you might go towards a more flat design:

Alternatively you might try to stack things up like:


Of course we don't know too much so it's all well and good and too late pipe-dreams but.. hopefully they've considered or might consider stuff like that. One idea, suggested a long while ago, was collecting the essence of zones (by taking part in activities of that space) to which you might do things like instill Thanalan weathers to your space, or there might be a node layout structure which changes the basic terrain to a Thanalan theme (ground textures, different formations, etc). Which could create incredibly varied visuals to your space without having to allow players what is essentially a high powered mod tool kit like a 'creation engine' or something.

Simply "Thanalan weather" "Thanalan base" slap some buildings with the themes you feel matches that design and suddenly you space would be /extremely/ different than someone rocking more green building themes with an Azim Steppe base. Of course adding these could take time, so IF they considered it I doubt they'd come out super often but I feel I could argue they would be substantially easier to provide to players over designing new housing wards.

Also may consider expansion slots, to help with the design.

Like picture you have a base node layout (which if you wanted to get crazy could be it's own thing outside of theme.. but that's getting a bit.. a lot). In this layout maybe you've got like Thanalan hamlet which provides this nice circle of nodes with a wall node that you can slap a wall 'item' into (which would build a wall of that theme appropriately around the nodes). But you really want your barn on a hill for some reason, yet the base layout doesn't really do that. You equip an expansion slot, picture it like FF7 extension materia- 'hill 2' which fits into the node but then adds it's own nested node to which you could put the barn into. Telling the game "I want a hill2, with a barn on it". More complex formations might even be layout specific or consume multiple nodes like a cloak does (wear a cloak takes your body and head slot). Same concept could be used for other things, for example if you look at the Limsa concept art above (third picture)- if you put down a building on node 4 but the house itself comes with a slot at the top such that within it you put down 'tree roof' and it gives it that cute look. Now of course adding too many nodes will quickly approach the cost of normal housing so it has to stop somewhere lol.. But an example where even taken to a shallow level could create very large differences in visuals and in the end ultimately a very personalized experience.

Strongly believing the start should help you out so you're not super lost initially, but later you can deslot / expand slot where you feel to add customization (but like... you could easily overwhelm someone if you tried to give them all of that right at the gate lol).

Anyway... A lot to dream for.. am curious how wild they went and how wild they might be willing to go.

Like they might not allow players to change much initially, but if players are like I love this but.. I wish I was on the Steppe. Then they might consider expanding it so you can change skybox, lighting, etc. Would be exceptionally neat to see if they go as far as their fancy zones like The Tempest or Elpis. Technically what I described could be quite complex but even if it was simple ('simple' lol) as allowing players to change the space directly under the entire island / skybox.. I feel that would be huge. Like maybe they feel 'wow that's too much to change the layout we set up or the shape of the island.. just no' but it might be reasonable to ask to change the skybox, the weather, and the general space that exists outside the bounds of the island. So like placing the island on an Elpis space (with a small ocean off to one side, but the rest just falls going off into the sky). Or your island like a New York Park within the Amaurot space.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

It's 100% going to be a side activity and not a substitute for an actual house. Might there be housing like aspects? Who knows.

The simple reality is that if it were housing, Yoshi-P would have been hyping it to heck and back again, given the insane demand for housing that exists. The playerbase would go absolutely insane and skyrocket into the moon if Yoshi-P said 'Everyone gets a house with Island Sanctuary!' The very fact he's telling people to cool their expectations and is pretty silent regarding info about it is pretty huge evidence they don't want people to get ideas that its something grander than what it actually will be, it's a deliberate PR move.

[Arzalis]

That isnt hyping it up , thats a typical feature presentation of WIP content

Its the players that created the "hype" after the fact and player speculation has made up what it hopes it will be.

A developer "hyping " a feature would make much more of a presentation of it. Most likely a whole featurette of nothing but said feature . That would be a developer "hyping" a product/feature , with continued internal/external press pieces with it featured again especially when they have more finished components of said feature to reveal.

The entire purpose of the media tour (where this was said) is to create hype. If you think it's for anything else, I dunno what to tell you.

[ForteNightshade]

Island Sanctuary is either going to be a runaway hit or the biggest flop since Diadem. I feel there is absolutely no middle ground here just in terms of player performance. The community as a whole as overhyped this to hell and back. Which is... not going to go over well if it winds up being not all that robust.

Unfortunately, I tend to think it'll be more akin to a mixture of the Firmament and Doman in terms of scale. You'll end up going there to do some tasks ala Beast Tribes and it'll inevitably become another weekly "chore". I want to be proven wrong but their track record on new features hasn't exactly been stellar.

[Jojoya]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that remembers that we were supposed to get "player run farms" in ShB...

I took another look at that keynote address a couple of weeks ago.

While player run farms were teased in the middle of all the Shadowbringers announcements at the NA FanFest, they were mentioned as coming sometime in the future and not Shadowbringers specifically. They were not mentioned at the EU or JP FanFests at all.

I think SE might have been hoping to have them ready by the 5.5 patch then they got shoved on the back burner along with so much other stuff thanks to COVID.

[Nezerius]

I took another look at that keynote address a couple of weeks ago.

While player run farms were teased in the middle of all the Shadowbringers announcements at the NA FanFest, they were mentioned as coming sometime in the future and not Shadowbringers specifically. They were not mentioned at the EU or JP FanFests at all.

I think SE might have been hoping to have them ready by the 5.5 patch then they got shoved on the back burner along with so much other stuff thanks to COVID.

To add to this, it's very likely that these "player run farms" eventually evolved into the "ranch-like gameplay" that was mentioned in the interviews leading up to 5.2. This was specifically part of the answer to a question about ShB's deep dungeon, which Yoshi-P mentioned had been cut because of this content. Source is in Japanese, but a google translate of the page turns it into something understandable enough: https://dengekionline.com/articles/26085/
There was also a different interview (don't have that one on hand) that mentioned something about a "minion farm", likely referring to the same system.

I'd imagine this system is what further turned into Island Sanctuaries.

[MintnHoney]

Island Sanctuary is either going to be a runaway hit or the biggest flop since Diadem.

I'll take "Please Look Forward To It" for 500, Alex.

[Mika_Zahard]

Historically, it's better to say nothing and be as vague as possible. If you build up specific expectations and something changes, a lot of people lose their minds. "but you said..." "you promised!!"

Just look back at what happened with Endwalker's launch date. It was in the name of putting out a more stable product and Yoshi-P was very apologetic, but people were still nuts about it for a while.

And they were RIGHT to be pissed, because the queues were terrible, and they were blaming player connections instead of their OWN spaghett code.

[Izar_Chillen]

The entire purpose of the media tour (where this was said) is to create hype. If you think it's for anything else, I dunno what to tell you.

Which is exactly my point . A presentation with vague details in order for the players to fill in the blanks.

Its almost always player generating hype unless its large and regular scale media focused pieces with new reveals as the months pass and more is presentable and marketable. And despite that is falls to the advertised to (the customers) , that get "hyped" up with greater expectations as more news with details are presented.

Advertising 101.



"If you think it's for anything else, I dunno what to tell you"