Island Sanctuary feels intentionally slow and inefficient.

[Sotaris]

Yea, at rank 5 you'll get new tools for the mammets to expand. That's where the slog kinda starts and you'll either have to wait for timers (workshops, cropland, pastures) for daily XP drops or grind out nodes.

Thought so, thanks

[hagare]

Surely you see the problem here?

what problem?
you want to play other games when it's done?
but since you have to wait, why not play it while you wait?
Instead of whine and complain?
The solution is right there!
Nothing's stopping you to play something else while you wait

[LaylaTsarra]

Surely you see the problem here?

Yes you want to wall to all pull Sanctuary and they aren't going to let you sorry.

[Alleo]

I honestly like it that way. Of course Harvest Moon and other such games have more in it because they are a full game about that stuff. The Island is bascially just one of the many side contents that you can do in this game. If they put too much behind it, people might feel forced to constantly play only that one instead of the rest of the game. Now you can fully decide on how much time you spent there and still get something out of it.

Only have little time for this game? Well go there, feed your animals, tend to your crops and maybe gather a few things to create items in the workshop and be done with it to play something else in FF14. Or you have way more time on your hand then you can basically stay there and just gather a lot. Both of those paths leads to earning the rewards that you want, just that one will get it faster than the other. And since they do plan to update this over time who knows what will still come.

[LaylaTsarra]

The key to the rewards is fully building your Island don't worry about spending right now. You'll have 4 workshops and at least one granary and they'll bring in the money daily. You have to spend to make money. Earning currency will be too slow if you don't.

I don't know when the next update/patch will be but there is plenty of time for this. My problem at the moment is to get out of Sanctuary and run regular content. I normally live in my gardens for my houses and now I'm living in Sanctuary.

It's meant to be a time sink until 6.25 and beyond.

[Moerser]

Surely you see the problem here?

Yes, ur still here.

Greetz o/

[Absurdity]

Be a smart consumer. Don't engage with content you do not enjoy. Virtual rewards are not worth wasting your time on content that annoys you instead of entertains you.

This isn't even a question of forcing yourself to do content you don't enjoy, the game doesn't let you do anything with the island besides click through a bunch of menus for 15 minutes once a day.

[Mimilu]

I'm only rank 4 after playing in small burst for the past 2 days so you can take my opinion with a grain of salt but Island Sanctuary doesn't feel like a life, farming/gardening, or survival sim to me (examples like Animal Crossing, Minecraft, Rune Factory, etc.), it feels more like a incremental, clicker game (Cookie Clicker, for example) but with more steps.
With most life-sims, once you get pasted the beginning/tutorial of the game, you have free reign to play how you want, at your own pace (slow OR fast) vs here, where you are stuck playing at their set speed and pretty much have to do every aspect of it.
For me, another hallmark of a good life-sim is it's ability to create "moments", personal events that feel special too you (character interactions, surviving against the odds, creative endeavors, etc.). With how set progression is on the island an how impersonal its options are, it doesn't feel like any of these kinds of moments can really be made. ┐(‘～`；)┌

[Hyrist]

The frame work is there, and it's just the sort of slow-grind that keeps me from getting too obsessive over it. We were told on the onset this was time-gated content designed to be digested slowly. I guess it misses the mark with the demographic that posts reguarly in the forums.

People were going to burn through it like it was running out of the presses no matter what, so I'm not sure whether or not it was wise to release it in the state it is now and release updates in stages like they planned, or have just waited till 6.5 to let this one go in bulk. But the people who are complaining reminds me of those who started the game late and did the first of the alliance raids and went "Where's the other two?".

So, I'll wrap up my end and give the feedback that customization should be the goal moving forward. A lot of people were hopeful that this could have been a replacement for instanced housing - which I shot down the moment they did not say it was instance housing from the start. I'd very much like them to put it in that direction, but I'm glad for the experimentation none the less. They can still work this towards that direction moving forward if they take the feedback - but I'm betting transferring the items from housing to this system would be a larger undertaking than what they're doing with the MSQ Dungeons, so I've zero expectations there.

Meanwhile, still plenty to do on my Island when I don't feel like grinding combat content.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Yeah I think the content itself is fine as a good base for them to build more upon. I do hope we get the option to freely customize and place buildings with a grid system in the future along with animal breeding.

Again its both baffling and...expected to find people sap away the fun of things with how they always go for the min-maxer route and rushing to get things done rather than how the devs constantly been stating that IS is supposed to be a on and off distraction to progress.

I really just work on it while I wait for queues in roulettes and I'm so happy there's finally something that I can actually do rather than afk'ing in Limsa.