So is no one still excited for Island Sanctuary...

[HisShadowX]

... now that the lack of housing and gardening as it exists in housing is confirmed?

Seems like all the ongoing conversation has disappeared since the Live Letter.

Personally, I think it will be fun for at least a few months based on what was shared. Looks like a good sized area to explore and it will be interesting to see what flexibility we have in building placement not to mention see how many options we're given for architecture styles.

Hard to predict longevity past the first few months because it would depend on what content updates it gets and how often new rewards get added. Once everything is upgraded and desired rewards purchased, it doesn't seem like something that would be worth continuing.



For those disappointed that time was spent to develop this over helping more players get access to houses/gardening, you may want to add your feedback and comments to this thread or one of the others in the Housing sibforum:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Housing-thread

You're not the only ones disappointed but better to leave that feedback in a place that SE is more likely to look for it.

They know what the player base wants. This reminds me of FFXIV 1.0 where the developers refused to listen to what people wanted and just focused on a minority of people aka the hardcore players.

Thank god they got someone to remake the game and focus on casuals. The problem is we are again at that crossroads where the players want player housing and many don't care about using real money either. Its nice that Square Enix isn't nickle and diming us to where we can pay for some cool looking armor because we need to earn it in game but they are leaving money on the table here for people who want to earn it and can buy it.

Same with instanced housing people who pay real money for this service can get what they want and also the service pays for it self.

[hynaku]

Maybe if they made it like the sims where could raise a family on it I would be excited for it.

[KageTokage]

I'm now officially interested in it.

I just hope they have a good variety of animals to put on the island whether feathered, furred, or scaled.

It would be nice if we could invite some dragons to come live there.

[ICountFrom0]

This was a chance to let the have nots be able to do estate gardening.
This was a chance to balance things out. Let folks make onion knights and tomato kings.
This ... didn't happen.

This was a chance for many things. *shrug* I will wait to see what it actually is, but not doing that one thing will always be a strike.

[Airget]

Overall remarks for Island Sanctuary I feel shoudl be held until we actually see it in action. They showcase that the location is going to be big, so that part is intriguing but then it becomes, how much of that can we manipulate. The real selling point is how are the buildings going to work, and how much of the fields can we manipulate.

I feel like the current draw they are going for is using the resources within the content to showoff your personal island flair, what creatures are you going to raise, what plants will you plant. Then there is also the minion aspect, each island will have your own personal minions you want to show off, so it's just a fun little way to show off your personality with the limitations imposed.

I imagine that the fact that there most likely will be no furniture used within the sanctuary is potentially what gives them the resources to give you a big island and to play around with it, so pretty much a "limited" customization factor but the factor which you are customizing comes with requirements in order to achieve them by partaking in the content, whether it potentially be interesting crossbreeds with farming or getting those rare creature varieties on your island.

I imagine people would have fun showing off their Fully Exotic lineup of creatures of only the rarest variety or maybe even situations where a person can show off the first to find X type of crossbreed.

[Shougun]

I'm excited for it! I have consistently said as much and continue to be so- though the amount of information leaves a lot to be desired.....

I never thought it would be instanced housing, but I do believe they should point it in that direction and make every attempt to be as such.

If not already done I sincerely hope they quickly take easy steps to that way, and make the harder steps as they can while hopefully letting people know (but being honest on timeframes if it's going to be a long time).

For example some thoughts for housing (not general desires, which I have others / more):

• Allow construction of facilities that have amenities like an inn room in the game, this could include literally binding a door to an inn room (or other pre-fab designs, this can be a benefit for those who want a decorated space but don't want to decorate lol). I feel this might already be true, or if not should be very do-able and I hope they make true before release or very soon after. Including chocobo stable features.
• Allow purchase of mog garden plot rights, ward houses come with # rights = the size of house. All ward users can buy more (up to 3, the large). You can put your mog plots in your island or in your ward outdoor slot (per character maximum), non-ward users obviously start with 0 mog garden plots but can buy them. Alternatively revamp the entire system, and then reintroduce that new system (end result being no / limited difference)
• On top of the facilities you can build outdoors, add outdoor furnishings as possible
• Allow apartments to meet the demand of players (1:1), allow apartment rooms to be bound to the instanced space
• Upgrade apartment system, with likely small steps at first. This may include a merge / shift in definitions as the system is upgraded / evolved such that apartment is simply "inside of the house" and as such the ward houses use the same system as your pocket dimension internal house with no outsides (meaning a small exterior house could have a large interior), naturally as mentioned above allow the 'apartment' to bind to the island (so your exterior-less house, if you didn't own a ward space, would now have an exterior).

Without all that I am still excited, but I really think even taking a few of those steps would be a good idea. IF they allow the system to offer strong home feeling with many of the features, that'd be great, if it has quality prefab designs, even better, but if they can go as far as making it entirely instanced housing. Freaking fantastic. It doesn't have to be in one fell swoop either, though better communication of what's going on would probably help with expectations.


I've more comments, hopes, desires for the system itself... :

Like I think starting with some concerns about damaging the economy, given what happened with WoW, is fine, but hopefully be open to the idea it has outside world value and then communicate the conservative approach (if that's what they're doing). As I would like for it to be something worth investing in beyond the fun of growing a world space (which is fun, but I'd like it to have value outside of the island itself lol). I imagine ways it might, or could, is buy spending the points you earn for crafting materials that are market-able (new and old crafting supplies alike). Although hopefully there is some logical progression too, like not "this task gives you 5 tokens, that gives you 4- and here is a huge list". More like, you unlocked the tier 5 mines and you unlocked moogle miners with 200 tokens that allows you to bring out Y kupo-Orichalcum which is used for some fancy crafts (and has value).

Without destroying the economy, or causing players to have to babysit the content so much that they can't leave, I hope they sincerely consider adding cool features that have some meaningful impact to the player experience.

I doubt this would be at launch but I would really hope they consider allowing world space changes, I think it would be really cool and while not 'super easy' certainly easier than designing entire new ward zones. For example either independently or via a larger theme change you could make your space appear to be in Azim Steppe (by a lake for the purpose of the fishing dock), in Amaurot, in Elpis, etc. Now some of that would probably flow without too many changes (foresty looking theme in Elpis is probably fine), but if they went as far as say a Thanalan theme... it would require a lot of ground texture thoughts (like if the island was retextured, this is possible but not 5 mins of work lol). Starting with more straight forward options and adding them as reasonable, like changing skybox, weather, and some of the outside of bounds water to grasslands leaving a lake for fishing.. might be not an insane amount of work but very quickly entirely change the entire vibe of the island and give a player a substantially different world space feel. If buildings could be theme'd that would be extra incredible (so if you chose to go Amaurot). Something that'd obviously be done in packages, rather than all at once since it would still take a lot of work. But I think would be really cool- as evidence by Wildstar like housing systems.




I hope they were inspired a lot by the games they did mention (to which they also cautioned not to expect an entire 3 year dev of, fair), but also hopefully they did look at the best that the other MMOs akin systems had to offer (it's obviously akin to a Garrison, which did some cool things, and some not so cool things- but also GW2 has a system similar).


Am excited, hope the content does well, hope they can communicate their ideas and desires well- including address feedback / expectations they're receiving, am a bit sad that some people accidentally or purposefully spread the idea that it's instanced housing (when it seems like it clearly was never- and doesn't help the devs don't address these rumors head on sometimes..).

[Irenia]

I see the OF is being hyperbolic as usual

With the latest liveletter information it seems to me that Island Sanctuary is going to be the "Restoration of Ishgard" content for EW
but with the "Firmament" and "Diadem" rolled into one location and a little bit friendlier since it sounds like all the materials will get accumulated in a separate inventory now
the export mechanic they mentioned seems to me the logical place to insert Expert Recipes for EW in subsequent patches

now allow me to put on my tinfoil hat and get my hopium infusion set up
The restoration of ishgard happened over the course of Shadowbringers and it wasn't until Endwalker that the actual Imperium housing ward opened up
they leveraged additional hype for Imperium by getting players involved in an expansion long event

we're about to embark on an expansion long endeavor to develop/renovate an island getaway
they're banking on getting players invested to build hype in the next expansion for ???
*inhales hopium*
instance housing next expansion best case
another housing district worst case

Personally, my hopium comes from the tech. The fact that this is instanced, has limited customizable features, and you can invite others to your island makes me feel that this is the bones of instanced housing, made into content so that we actually get content instead of waiting forever. This would push back instanced housing in this case, but I prefer it like this.

...if that is the case. This may also be the furthest they can push custom instances without the servers catching fire.

In either case, I know two people who are even more excited for island sanctuary now.

[Krotoan]

.. I'm excited? Can you not see me doing my little excited dance!

lookit... dancing.. excited!



I'm not sure what you wanted from everyone? we got like.. the sketchiest of outlines :

Is island (we knew)
Has minions (we knew)
Involves gardening (we knew)
Is extremely big in actual map size (we did not know but I'm not sure what to do other than go wow that is a big island)
Is grindy and similar in scope to ishgard restoration (also did not know but it was within speculation , so nice detail but not a whole lot to go on)



I am excited about this feature but not about to lose it or start wildly speculating (as the devs have asked us not to).

[Erinellza]

I'm still hyped for Island Sanctuary. The size was a surprise to me, I expected something smaller.

[rainichan]

I've been hyped for it since it was announced. The recent live letter showing off as much as they could and confirming a little more on what would be included made me even more excited for it. I figured it'd be like Harvest Moon in my FFXIV and that, at the very least, was confirmed. My friends are going to lose me to Island Sanctuary because Harvest Moon is like the Sims for me: I'll start it and then 18 hours later come out of the daze it induces in me wondering what year it is.

Can't wait.