Did Island Sanctuary satisfy any reasons you want a house?

[texas_boy]

Has Island Sanctuary satisfied at least part of your reasons for wanting a house?

If so, where did it "hit the spot"?

What does it still lack that you expect to get from a house?

What has been the overall impact on your desire to get a house?

If the island had the ability to grow plants like you can in houses I think that would meet my needs.

For a while I wanted a house but honestly I think it was because of the buzz around the houses. Tried an apartment, and I absolutely suck at decorating.

Having seen some of the absolutely stunning decors that many people have done I can see where that would be end-game, and I don't think the island would ever be able to come close to matching.

It is nice though having a place to get away to that's private, and right now the crafting and such is very enjoyable but I imagine after purchasing everything on the wish list from the island vendor it will lose a lot of the appeal. Hoping that there will be additional items added to the vendors as time goes on.

Great question!

[JamieRose]

Island sanctuary is basically you running a sweatshop. It could have been much more.

[BIues]

Island Sanctuary was REPEATEDLY stated that it wouldnt be a means to satisfy any housing need. So no, I didnt expect it would fulfill housing needs. And it hasnt. I still have mountains of housing rewards Im unable to use.
That being said though I do quite agree that now having seen what they are capable of in terms of INSTANCED solo content, I wonder why we cant have such a housing format.

We are constantly given housing furnishings as reward but all too few can use them due to housing demand, especially if said rewards are "outdoor furnishings" as Apartments do not allow for such functionality. Which leads me into my argument. If Island Sanctuary is possible, then so is SOLO instanced housing. I hope that after using Island Sanctuary as a trial run of sorts, the developers will try to create another option for housing. One especially for the common players who have otherwise been incapable of obtaining regardless of their many futile attempts.

You do realize that they are pointedly not capable of instanced housing. The day Island Sanctuary came out, entire servers were locked out of housing wards and their island because they use the same server. I cannot imagine the strain real instanced housing would cause. They simply do not have the server space, apparently.

[Lubu_Mykono]

No I still want my erp brothel.

[MistyMew]

no of course not, its nothing like housing we cant design, choose....anything
its a side game that some will love and thats excellent! ♥ but it's not even remotely close to housing.

[Jojoya]

You do realize that they are pointedly not capable of instanced housing. The day Island Sanctuary came out, entire servers were locked out of housing wards and their island because they use the same server. I cannot imagine the strain real instanced housing would cause. They simply do not have the server space, apparently.

You mean it's like every player decided to check out their new Island at the same time, causing instance servers to be temporarily overloaded.

I haven't had problems getting into my housing on any of my characters or on my islands for my characters that have them since Saturday night.

It's only a problem when everyone wants to get into their housing or Island Sanctuary at the same time. Now that people have had a chance to see what the content is like, it's no longer an issue.

[Packetdancer]

Just the same, it has a few of the features that players frequently mention when talking about why they want a house (gardening, larger private space, outdoor area, etc.).

While I enjoy Island Sanctuary for what it is... I would argue that the "gardening" in Island Sanctuary is not the "gardening" that people want houses for; yes, you can grow things (yay!), but they are not things like... say, crafting materials. Or Thavnairian onions.

This. Right now it seems to be just a bit of a daily/weekly thing. This isn't bad on its own but IS was sort of advertised, at least in my opinion as something we'd be able to customize to some degree to make it your own. You can't really do that though sadly.

I actually wouldn't rule this out yet. I strongly suspect we're going to unlock new customizations as time goes on, whether via the Island Sanctuary or as rewards for other contents/seasonal events/whatever.

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.

It actually demonstrably did cause stability/reliability issues for Balmung at the very least, based on forum threads about island sanctuary being so overloaded that people could not get into their actual normal houses (since evidently they run the Island Sanctuary instances from the same pool as housing interior instances). I know on Leviathan we had a few rough patches the first few days as well, but they did pass reasonably quickly.

That said, after the initial spike, Primal and Crystal seem to be handling it pretty well. (Aether is, I gather, not having a great time of things, though I have no alt there to know either way.) However, I think you can argue a lot of people tried out Island Sanctuary and then went "eh, not what I hoped" and that's why the instance servers recovered and the load issues were only temporary.

Conversely, if they had true instanced housing and people got all their wishes, I do not think the pressure on the instance servers would go away so readily...

[Zaniel]

I have a house but I would still enjoy IS even if I didn't. I don't conflate the two.

The only thing I was sad about for IS was there was fundamentally no exploration. I feel they missed an opportunity by making it zoom-zoom and being able to get from one end to the other in 10s. There's no hidden caves for spelunking (and jump puzzles), no swamps or winding paths through shifting bamboo groves. Could have extended its lifespan significantly, especially if animal hunting involved more exploration instead of just running around at lightspeed. Think GW2 jumping puzzles which are more an exercise in exploration than soul-crushing accuracy.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

You mean it's like every player decided to check out their new Island at the same time, causing instance servers to be temporarily overloaded.

I haven't had problems getting into my housing on any of my characters or on my islands for my characters that have them since Saturday night.

It's only a problem when everyone wants to get into their housing or Island Sanctuary at the same time. Now that people have had a chance to see what the content is like, it's no longer an issue.

So then why are people still getting the error?

[Tlamila]

I have housing, and no, its nothing alike.
Housing is my house, where I have all my things and all, IS is...a part time job Tataru gave me. Nothing there is mine, I'm the physical laborarer and manager or something. Merlwyb is the owner, Tataru the CEO. I just work for them. And then at the end of the work day I go back to my house and hug my plushies.