Did Island Sanctuary satisfy any reasons you want a house?

[dspguy]

It is a nice distraction/diversion from the rest of the game. It has some rewards to bring out with you. So that's nice. It shouldn't replace housing. Nor should it have players asking WHY more instanced housing isn't possible. The customization options for Island Sanctuary are heavily limited.

[Mimilu]

Instead, it's a mobile game with mammots. Also, did they have to pick the absolute ugliest area of the island to set up our "house"?

That's the vibe I got too, like IS was designed to eventually be playable on a mobile device. Everything is just point and click, time-locked, and really impersonal. It's less a living or farming/garden sim and more of an incremental/clicker game.
I'm only rank 5 now and I'm at the point where I'm like "When can I start getting the blue tokens so I can buy the hairstyles, glamour, and mounts and get the hell out of here?".
It's less relaxing and enjoyable and more boring and grindy to me. I would much rather spend time at the small house I spent 3mil on and personally decorated then this sprawling, empty island. ( ･ั﹏･ั)

[Xylira]

To OP's question: No, not really.

If anything it makes me want my own house even more, specifically instanced housing. The existence of Island Sanctuaries shows that SE has the capability to give access to on demand personal instances to everyone in a way that won't crash the servers, and has methods to throttle for overcrowding and eject afk people from said instances. I'd much rather have my own instanced area, independent from the archaic ward system, where I could have my own home that I can decorate like a regular house and have people visit.

[Iscah]

I'm only rank 5 now and I'm at the point where I'm like "When can I start getting the blue tokens so I can buy the hairstyles, glamour, and mounts and get the hell out of here?".

Sorry to say, but... not yet.

I'm up to rank 8 and had to scrape together all of my cowries to pay for the third pasture and crop expansions. I was literally down to my last 13c which then got spent on 12c of new seed varieties. Literally one cowrie left in my bank.

I'm trying to do the factory management stuff to level up but I can't even be bothered looking at the demand spreadsheet. My eyes just instantly glaze over and I go back to just setting up the timetable based on what materials I have on hand.

Can you set a permanent weekly schedule? I might just work something out that lines up with what animals I own, pay the mammets to look after them, and come back every few days to pick things up.

Also I've decided that keeping things like alligators is silly, and I will just aim for "sensible farm animals" like a flock of sheep and some goats. (But also the armadillos. They're cute. I want a mount.)

I'm thinking it would have been easier to just do the weekly "gather 100 items" challenge log for a few months to earn the hairstyles and pixie wings. Certainly will be trying that on any alts that need it. It's sort of a good thing that I don't like the glamour rewards much.

[Skivvy]

Sorry to say, but... not yet.

I'm up to rank 8 and had to scrape together all of my cowries to pay for the third pasture and crop expansions. I was literally down to my last 13c which then got spent on 12c of new seed varieties. Literally one cowrie left in my bank.

I'm trying to do the factory management stuff to level up but I can't even be bothered looking at the demand spreadsheet. My eyes just instantly glaze over and I go back to just setting up the timetable based on what materials I have on hand.

Can you set a permanent weekly schedule? I might just work something out that lines up with what animals I own, pay the mammets to look after them, and come back every few days to pick things up.

Also I've decided that keeping things like alligators is silly, and I will just aim for "sensible farm animals" like a flock of sheep and some goats. (But also the armadillos. They're cute. I want a mount.)

I'm thinking it would have been easier to just do the weekly "gather 100 items" challenge log for a few months to earn the hairstyles and pixie wings. Certainly will be trying that on any alts that need it. It's sort of a good thing that I don't like the glamour rewards much.

I also just ranked up to 8 yesterday, and I was left with 2 blue cowries once I upgraded everything!

As far as the workshop goes, I really don't enjoy playing markets...even if it's just what IS gives us, and so I found the following guide really helpful for setting up two weeks worth of crafts. https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...de_version_10/

You can use the "lazy man's" presets that are shown on the right hand side of the Workshop tab, and it should give you a fairly decent yield, but obviously it's not going to be the best as it doesn't take into account the supply/demand. For me, it's perfect as I can set it and forget it and just make sure I have all the materials needed for it. When you're setting up the workshop, you can right-click on the + signs, and then you can save a preset.

[Irenia]

From what I've played of it, not really.

Though I'm even more convinced of my tinfoil hypothesis that Island Sanctuary is built off of the failed attempts to give us true instanced player housing.

[RyuDragnier]

To be honest, I like it better than normal housing. At this point I spend more time at my Island Sanctuary than I do my own house ingame. The fact that I can queue up for stuff while there and exit back into it, and log out just to respawn in there when I log in helps things as well. Overall it fixes a number of things I dislike about housing atm, though I do wish it was a lot more customizable. If I could transfer my house and everything in it to the Island Sanctuary, I'd do it.

[Eraden]

From the moment I found out that other people can not use the amenities on my Island, I went "NOPES" and bowed out. The primary focus of housing for me was to have a place that I could share with and hang out with others. I can do that with my tenants at my house. I can't really see Islands as having the same kind of functionality and thus I am doubtful that my friends would care much to come hang out on the Island.

[SilverObi]

Not really, but then again I wasn't expecting it to. It's a place to hang out and is essentially a mobile game so it fulfills the design criteria they described and I'm fine with what it is, that cowrie grind while ranking up though was brutal and the 5k given at the end as a reward feels a bit insulting lol

[Skivvy]

To be honest, I like it better than normal housing. At this point I spend more time at my Island Sanctuary than I do my own house ingame. The fact that I can queue up for stuff while there and exit back into it, and log out just to respawn in there when I log in helps things as well. Overall it fixes a number of things I dislike about housing atm, though I do wish it was a lot more customizable. If I could transfer my house and everything in it to the Island Sanctuary, I'd do it.

I never thought I'd say this, but I also prefer it to my house situation ATM. Now that very well could change once I hit max level and have caught all the animals I want, but time will tell!. Island Sanctuary is pretty barebones at this point, and I have a rather decent sized list of things I'd like to see them implement and/or improve upon, but I've not hated my time there, so that's a plus. lol.

As far as my house situation... I'm pretty much a solo player and so I have visitors to my house maaaaaaybe once a month or so. It's incredibly rare. For MB things I go to Limsa. For glamour I'm forced to go to a major city. I haven't gardened in awhile. The extra storage for my enormous surplus of furniture is probably the biggest perk ATM. So for me, housing doesn't have that big of a leg up over IS at this point. If they were to make a few additions to IS, I could almost see myself giving up my personal and FC house. I hate feeling tied to a sub anyway, so it would be nice to not have that burden. But again, that's gonna depend on how IS plays out, and if I toss it aside once I have all the goodies I want. :P I'm cautiously optimistic at this time, and that's saying A LOT for me when it comes to this game.