Island Content Gated behind Expertise Crafts

[Jojoya]

I'm aware of this. That doesn't change the fact that the green portion is useless. My statement was regarding my wish that the materials currently exchanged for green could be exchanged for blue instead, since I have a ridiculous excess of materials I'll never use and nothing worthwhile to do with them.

Buy Command or Competence IX materia, hold it until 6.3 is released and crafters are in a rush to pentameld their new crafting sets. Sell on marketboard. Profit.

It's the final goal of island sanctuary, it is part of the progression, it's the reward for progressing. But people without level 90 pentamelded crafters just don't get to have it for some reason. Saying 'just don't finish island sanctuary then" seems like a pretty weak justification.
It's not technically needed if you're going to be pedantic but it's kind of a slap in the face to just gate the content off for no reason from people without level 90 crafters without warning.

Except you do get to have it if you're willing to spend the gil for it.

Just like any other glamour that sells for millions of gil when first added to the game, the prices on the parts will come down over time as more crafters make them.

Tell me. How would you feel about the fountain if instead of being from Expert crafting, the parts were selling on a NPC vendor for 2 million gil each (a total of 12 million gil)?

That's still just being pedantic that it's not "technically" required.
You know that's not what this is about. Putting customization behind either having level 90 crafters or paying high prices on the market board is pretty ridiculous.

Except it's not your only option for customization anymore than the map glamour sets are your only option for glamours.

Nothing says you need to have one of each landmark. Want 4 Treehouses? You can have 4 Treehouses. I picked the bathhouse as the second landmark for one of my alts and absolutely hated the way it looked so when it came time for this character's third landmark, I placed a second windmill.

Here I thought people wouldn't be buying the stuff and wait until the prices drop but I've actually made about 35 mil selling the materials. Thank you, YoshiP.

There are lots of rich players who don't think twice about spending large amounts of gil to get what they want as soon as possible.

Congrats on your profits.

You ARE being pedantic while making an argument that is in complete contradiction to the whole point of this entire thread. Whether it's optional or not is meaningless. IS was supposed to be entirely self-contained. They iterated on this multiple times. Putting the "cherry on top" behind the most difficult/expensive crafting in the game is crap.

No, they did not reiterate that it was completely self-contained several times.

That was players jumping to conclusions just as they did in claiming Island Sanctuary would have housing.

What they told us was that Island Sanctuary would have no impact on progression in other parts of the game. You don't need a Sanctuary to raid or do dungeons or do FATES or do crafting or do anything else in the game. All it has that you take into the "outside world" are a few optional vanity items that are not needed for progression in other content.

Just as the fountain is a vanity item not needed for progression in Island Sanctuary.

I can earn raiding gear through clearing normal mode and gathering tomes if I don't have the gil to buy from the market board or the ability to craft gear. Where's the in-IS way to earn these materials? Even being able to buy them for the IS currencies would be an improvement over this mess.

You can also get other raiding gear through crafting. It's not the exact same gear but it's still valid for raiding.

You can also get other Sanctuary Landmarks through Sanctuary content. They're not the same as the crafted Landmark but they're still Landmarks.

[Packetdancer]

It was said (even in game) that you do NOT have to have a DoH or DoL job to do IS stuff. Then you suddenly do anyway.

No, it was said that "you do not have to have a DoL or DoH job to actually do the island things" -- which is correct, accurate, and completely true.

You can do island gathering without a DoL job; you do not need to have botanist leveled to gather island cotton balls or island apples, and you don't need to have miner leveled to get island copper ore or island leucogranite. You can do the island crafting without a DoH job; you don't need to have culinarian leveled to make the feed for your animals, nor do you need goldsmith or blacksmith leveled to make tools for your mammets.

You can take your island from "I just stepped on the beach" to rank 10 without ever needing to unlock a DoH or DoL job. That is completely in-line with what they promised.

Now, they did say that island sanctuary would not give meaningful benefits to other content; there's no island sanctuary item that gives you some massive crafting boost that would functionally make the sanctuary required for the greatest effectiveness as a crafter. There's no island sanctuary item that gives you a raid bonus. Etc.

Island sanctuary is thus (intended to be) completely optional, stress-free, no-pressure content; nothing you can get through island sanctuary gives you a meaningful benefit in some other system, thus there is no external pressure to do Island Sanctuary in order to gain benefit elsewhere in the game.

(Yes, there is -- sort of -- a way to get cheap materia, but let's be honest, it's more effective time-wise to just pop a spiritbond potion and go harvest some non-island resource nodes or craft some intermediate ingredients in bulk. Buying materia with cowries is not a meaningful advantage, as it's actually less efficient.)

But saying "you do not need to have a single DoH/DoL job leveled to progress your island" is not identical to saying "there will never be a way to use anything on the island that you would obtain outside of the island -- including things you can craft as a Disciple of the Hand or gather as a Disciple of the Land".

They never made any promises like that.

Now, you can argue that it's unfortunate that a system which does not confer benefit to any other part of the game can, itself, benefit from a different system; I'm personally not 100% convinced that Island Sanctuary needs to be divorced entirely from literally 100% of the rest of the game, but there may be a discussion to be had there.

But that is not the discussion we seem to be engaged in having right now.

[Boblawblah]

I guess I don't understand why high-level crafters needed to get an extra bonus from the Island Sanctuary compared to non-crafters. Would it be THAT bad if non-crafters were able to do everything that the Island offered?

[Memento]

God forbid they throw crafters and gatherers a bone...

[Skivvy]

God forbid they throw crafters and gatherers a bone...

The poor devils, how do they get by?

[Deceptus]

Re: Expert craft for the fountain.

The entire point of Island sanctuary is casual, which expert crafts are not. They are completely antithetical to the purpose of the Island Sanctuary.

They're the hardest things crafters can do. It's like requiring Ultimate for doing a Relic.

[hydralus]

Re: Expert craft for the fountain.

The entire point of Island sanctuary is casual, which expert crafts are not. They are completely antithetical to the purpose of the Island Sanctuary.

They're the hardest things crafters can do. It's like requiring Ultimate for doing a Relic.

Come now. Expert crafts aren't even comparable to extremes let alone ultimates. You don't need a group. You don't need to have good reaction times. You don't even gotta move around at all.

[Adeacia]

Tell me. How would you feel about the fountain if instead of being from Expert crafting, the parts were selling on a NPC vendor for 2 million gil each (a total of 12 million)

I'd gladly take that over what we have. It deletes gil from the game, and doesn't allow players to give into their greed. The reason I won't buy it from any players despite being able to, is that I refuse to give into the extreme greed of players.

[Claviusnex]

No, it was said that "you do not have to have a DoL or DoH job to actually do the island things" -- which is correct, accurate, and completely true.

You can do island gathering without a DoL job; you do not need to have botanist leveled to gather island cotton balls or island apples, and you don't need to have miner leveled to get island copper ore or island leucogranite. You can do the island crafting without a DoH job; you don't need to have culinarian leveled to make the feed for your animals, nor do you need goldsmith or blacksmith leveled to make tools for your mammets.

You can take your island from "I just stepped on the beach" to rank 10 without ever needing to unlock a DoH or DoL job. That is completely in-line with what they promised.

Now, they did say that island sanctuary would not give meaningful benefits to other content; there's no island sanctuary item that gives you some massive crafting boost that would functionally make the sanctuary required for the greatest effectiveness as a crafter. There's no island sanctuary item that gives you a raid bonus. Etc.

Island sanctuary is thus (intended to be) completely optional, stress-free, no-pressure content; nothing you can get through island sanctuary gives you a meaningful benefit in some other system, thus there is no external pressure to do Island Sanctuary in order to gain benefit elsewhere in the game.

(Yes, there is -- sort of -- a way to get cheap materia, but let's be honest, it's more effective time-wise to just pop a spiritbond potion and go harvest some non-island resource nodes or craft some intermediate ingredients in bulk. Buying materia with cowries is not a meaningful advantage, as it's actually less efficient.)

But saying "you do not need to have a single DoH/DoL job leveled to progress your island" is not identical to saying "there will never be a way to use anything on the island that you would obtain outside of the island -- including things you can craft as a Disciple of the Hand or gather as a Disciple of the Land".

They never made any promises like that.

Now, you can argue that it's unfortunate that a system which does not confer benefit to any other part of the game can, itself, benefit from a different system; I'm personally not 100% convinced that Island Sanctuary needs to be divorced entirely from literally 100% of the rest of the game, but there may be a discussion to be had there.

But that is not the discussion we seem to be engaged in having right now.

The blueprint for the fountain comes from the island and it can only be built on the island using island processes so that does make it a strictly island thing. If SEQ had allowed us to use housing items to personalize the island then I could have agreed that other housing types of objects could require outside processes but they didn't so I don't.

[Packetdancer]

I guess I don't understand why high-level crafters needed to get an extra bonus from the Island Sanctuary compared to non-crafters. Would it be THAT bad if non-crafters were able to do everything that the Island offered?

See, I think we're looking at this from opposite directions; I look at this and go "crafters wanted more challenging crafting content, so the devs added a really quite difficult new expert craft set... and they decided to make it a nifty cosmetic item rather than something that gives a meaningful numeric benefit somewhere."

If the new expert crafting content had been something combat-related, people would've been up in arms rioting about how this thing that's almost impossible to make is now mathematically necessary for optimal combat effectiveness.

Making it a cosmetic of some form thus avoids that.

If the new expert crafting content had been a glamour outfit, people would've been up in arms about how people are wearing this thing around and flaunting it. (There were, after all, people honestly complaining that it was unfair people who bought the Omega statue could use the emote in general content, where they had to see it being 'shown off'.)

Making it an item you put in a location avoids that.

If the new expert crafting content had been a housing item, people would've been up in arms rioting about how they now have aspirational crafter/gatherer content -- more difficult, higher-end things -- which they can't use even if they made it, because they don't have a house (because housing in this game is a shattered hellscape of fire and broken dreams).

Making it a cosmetic thing for Island Sanctuary -- which everyone has access to! -- avoids that.

But, of course, now folks are unhappy about that...

The blueprint for the fountain comes from the island and it can only be built on the island using island processes so that does make it a strictly island thing. If SEQ had allowed us to use housing items to personalize the island then I could have agreed that other housing types of objects could require outside processes but they didn't so I don't.

I don't see that any of that changes what they promised with regards to Island Sanctuary, which was:

1. That you could do the required crafting and gathering on your island without even unlocking a DoL or DoH job.
2. That nothing you could obtain via the island would give meaningful benefits outside of the island or be required by non-island content.

Both of those conditions are met; you do not need a botanist or miner to gather island resources. And you can't fish on the island -- presumably because that would have violated point #2 inasmuch as fishing completionists would now be obligated to go unlock the island (or, perhaps, fish on a friend's island).

Now, people seem to have misunderstood point #1 and interpreted it as "nothing related to the island, even optional things, will ever require anything that isn't tied to the island whatsoever." But that is not what they promised.

As I said, you can maybe argue that it would be nice if things were that way. You cannot, however, argue that the devs promised that things would be that way; trying to do so is at best a misinterpretation of what they actually promised. And perhaps you're not meaning your post in that manner, in which case... sure, it'd be nice if things were that way, fine. I think we can all agree that, yes, folks who were deeply into the island and don't have DoL/DoH jobs are probably feeling unhappy that they might need to buy the otter fountain parts off of the marketboard in order to get the permit (even if they then can construct the fountain itself entirely via island processes). That's not an ideal situation.

But much of this thread seems to be predicated on the assumption that the devs did in fact promise that 100% of all things related to the island sanctuary, even optional ones, would only ever be earned on the island forever and always swear to Hydaelyn. And that is not the case.