Thoughts on Island Santuary

[Jojoya]

The top two things that I like to do in MMOs are.....gathering and exploring. I am thinking I might just go for this. However, The developers had better be prepared for an explorer who is going to dig through every nook and cranny of this island before the base even gets built!

They are. YoshiP said a few section of the island won't be accessible until you've built up your island sufficiently but there's nothing to stop you from exploring the rest.

Also, I'm tired of thinking the sanctuary could in any shape or form be housing, when they're entirely different systems.

So don't think of it as housing. Many of us have been warning others all along it was not going to be housing. I don't see how anyone who watched the Live Letter can still think it is.

As for those who don't watch things like the Live Letter and content creator summaries to avoid spoilers, they'll just have to be disappointed on patch day if they still want to believe it's housing.

[Tlamila]

So don't think of it as housing. Many of us have been warning others all along it was not going to be housing. I don't see how anyone who watched the Live Letter can still think it is.

As for those who don't watch things like the Live Letter and content creator summaries to avoid spoilers, they'll just have to be disappointed on patch day if they still want to believe it's housing.

I edited. I meant I'm tired of people thinking it. Not me. I was pretty sleepy when I posted.

[DamianFatale]

Looks neat so far. From what they've showed it looks like you can't fly around and pick your favorite spot on the island to build tho. Scripted positions.

They should have at the least let you have a couple of different choices. X.x

[Solarra]

It's not going to be housing like the wards. In fact, I wouldn't really class it as housing at all except in the loosest terms - There will be buildings, you will be able to walk into into them
I'm expecting set models, set positions and if we are lucky, some customisation via a 'hook system' that would let us place specific items in a particular place.

If people are still expecting this to provide instanced houses like we have in the wards, I think they'll be sorely disappointed.

[Sotaris]

It's not going to be housing like the wards. In fact, I wouldn't really class it as housing at all except in the loosest terms - There will be buildings, you will be able to walk into into them
I'm expecting set models, set positions and if we are lucky, some customisation via a 'hook system' that would let us place specific items in a particular place.

If people are still expecting this to provide instanced houses like we have in the wards, I think they'll be sorely disappointed.

I've compared it to Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon, very losely. You can get 'barns' and stuff for your island and that's about it.

Which all of that I'm good with, I love those IP's.

[dspguy]

Looks neat so far. From what they've showed it looks like you can't fly around and pick your favorite spot on the island to build tho. Scripted positions.

I think part of the reason we have limited housing is because we have near unlimited customization in the housing we do have. Items can be on any plane (x,y,z) axis with pixel precision coupled with rotating it fractions of degrees. Items can be dyed. Multiple that by the number of items in a house and server having to transmit all of that information to any player that enters a house... as well as transmitting all of that information about the exterior of each house in ward for every player that enters...

That, in my opinion, is why we don't just have more wards added to accommodate everyone.

If Island Sanctuaries have placement limitations, it is possibly done to alleviate the endless permutations of information that has to be sent to each player when their system has to render the screen.

[Shibi]

If Island Sanctuaries have placement limitations, it is possibly done to alleviate the endless permutations of information that has to be sent to each player when their system has to render the screen.

Not really. 3 x 32 bits can a position vector and another can contain the rotation in radians. Dye can be done in 8 bits. So those "endless permutations" can be provided with 17 bytes per object, plus the extra to identify the object.

At 17 bytes of data, that's clearly not the reason.

The reason is simple, really. "SE decided they didn't want this to be housing, so it has no housing features."

It's fluff you do in order to get a mount, a minion, and some dyes.

[Lazariah]

It's not housing, but I will be living there lol.

Seriously I am a massive sucker for games like that. My static is concerned that they'll have to hunt me down and make sure I do other content once and a while.

[Jojoya]

It's not housing, but I will be living there lol.

Seriously I am a massive sucker for games like that. My static is concerned that they'll have to hunt me down and make sure I do other content once and a while.

I get the impression that it will only last for a couple of weeks before you're on time for raid again. YoshiP did say that as we get farther into content, the time needed to grow certain items will increase significantly and while the island is big, it's not so big you can be exploring for weeks.

[Amenara]

My hopium is that Island Sanctuaries are a test bed for SE's instancing technology and sometime in the future they can create an instanced housing system from what they learned on these.