Island Sanctuary feels intentionally slow and inefficient.

[saxman09]

It has been repeated I don't know how many times by SE - don't expect this to be anything fast. Don't expect this to be competitive. Don't expect housing. Don't expect too much out of this. Don't expect, don't expect, don't expect.

And some of you are expecting exactly what they told you not to.

Mind blowing. Really.

^This is the mentality that makes AAA devs lazy and create mediocre and broken content.

[Jojoya]

^This is the mentality that makes AAA devs lazy and create mediocre and broken content.

That's not what causes mediocre and broken content.

Broken content comes from players throwing money at game titles despite being months away from launch. The company already has your money, why should they care about the quality of the end result?

Broken content comes from players demanding the content be released sooner instead of when it's ready because they can't wait, they want to rush through everything.

Mediocre itself is subjective. What one player enjoys 10 others (or more) will dislike. Contrary to the WoW mindset, games don't need to attract millions of buyers/subscribers to be good or successful. Some of the best games will cater to a niche crowd. Many successful games only had a few tens of thousands of players but those players were enough to cover all development and related costs plus a profit for the makers.

If you're viewing something as mediocre that other players strongly like, chances are good you picked up something that is not suited to your game style. That's not a fault of the game company or the developers. That's simply you decided to take a chance and it didn't work out for you because it's not really your style.

Island Sanctuary is fine for what it was intended to be. It shouldn't be surprising that those who seem the most unhappy with it rushed through all its content right away because that's not how it was intended to be played.

[Raoabolic]

That's not what causes mediocre and broken content.

Broken content comes from players throwing money at game titles despite being months away from launch. The company already has your money, why should they care about the quality of the end result?

Broken content comes from players demanding the content be released sooner instead of when it's ready because they can't wait, they want to rush through everything.

Mediocre itself is subjective. What one player enjoys 10 others (or more) will dislike. Contrary to the WoW mindset, games don't need to attract millions of buyers/subscribers to be good or successful. Some of the best games will cater to a niche crowd. Many successful games only had a few tens of thousands of players but those players were enough to cover all development and related costs plus a profit for the makers.

If you're viewing something as mediocre that other players strongly like, chances are good you picked up something that is not suited to your game style. That's not a fault of the game company or the developers. That's simply you decided to take a chance and it didn't work out for you because it's not really your style.

Island Sanctuary is fine for what it was intended to be. It shouldn't be surprising that those who seem the most unhappy with it rushed through all its content right away because that's not how it was intended to be played.

Are you telling me that day one sales for AAA are not as important as preorders? Come on, that's silly. Most large companies bank on those day one sales so that in 6 or so months when the game is selling for a fraction of the price it will not hurt their bottom line since the majority of sales were doing in the first week. Look at the sales trends of any AAA title in the last couple of years to see for yourself!

[Boblawblah]

I put a couple of hours into the Island today, just getting the basic granaries (2) building as well as two workshops, and a couple of landmarks. When it starts to open up a bit, it's not SO bad, and I can see once you put a good amount of time into it, it isn't quite as obnoxious to keep going. I'd love to replace the mammets with cat girls though, that'd be nice. Or leather daddies, that'd be okay too.

I can see them expanding it to be much better than it currently is, and that's why I'd like to put some effort into it now so I don't have to do this grind when the good stuff gets here.

[george357]

not with the rare items only the gathering team can get them.

[Deo14]

Broken content comes from players throwing money at game titles despite being months away from launch. The company already has your money, why should they care about the quality of the end result?

In other games, yes. For long running MMORPG, which plans on releasing many more expansions and main source of money is monthly subs? Not so much.

Broken content comes from players demanding the content be released sooner instead of when it's ready because they can't wait, they want to rush through everything.

That's up to higher ups to decide. They need to make decision whether they release it in unfinished state or to make good content. Listening to players is important, but just as important is to learn when to not listen.

Island Sanctuary is fine for what it was intended to be. It shouldn't be surprising that those who seem the most unhappy with it rushed through all its content right away because that's not how it was intended to be played.

This is still MMORPG, every content should have at least some replay value, yet there's nothing to do once you reach rank 10 and have best animals. Then it's just weekly 10 minutes worth of content. And you can definitely get rank 10 in 2 weeks of relaxed playing. 1 month tops if you go really slow.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy IS, but there's simply not enough things to do. Content is simply made to be played once, since there's no max rank mechanic which keeps you playing. Only feature you get at max rank is flying, which imo is terrible and doesn't fit "relaxing" sanctuary theme at all.

[MagicPeanut]

Island Sanctuary is near perfect. I love the intentional slow pace in the mode, encouraging the player to just relax and take it easy. You can make a BUTT TON of cowries if you pay attention to the Workshop's Supply & Demand tab, so it's not hard to save up for the rewards I want. I enjoyed the slow and steady progress of the mammets on Landmarks in particular, like if you leave for a few hours but come back before it's done, you can see the foundations for your windmill being built. I can appreciate the fact the Wilds' music is intentionally slower to loop to allow the player to listen to 'nature' and get invested. I LOVE how I can name my animals practically whatever I want. (Seriously, I have a sheep I named "Bab, Destroyer Of Worlds".)

And I just adore the crops' graphical updates as they grow. Like, have you seen the tomatoes' close to done and blooming stages? It's too cute. (Setting the mammets to work on your crops and animals are cute too.) The writing for the sassy mammets and some of the tutorials got me laughing too! ("Don't be the Warrior of Light who made a mammet cry." really got me ) And lastly, I especially liked the silent tutorial for certain mechanics which helped the player to really plan for their next facility or to make tools for the mammets or whatnot.

The only, ONLY, real problem I have with the mode is the fact that crafting (As in DoH) IS still utilized to make a fountain and island glamour. This mode should exist on it's own, with it's own crafting. Why on earth they thought it would be a good idea to, not only include an outside part to be a requirement for something, but to make them hard to craft as well? (The fountain parts specifically.) And of course the prices are super high on the MB. It's supposed to be a relaxing mode where I can play on my own and finally not have to rely on crafting from myself or others. I dislike that they feel the need to include that aspect of the game in so MANY parts of the game.

Other than that, I noticed a LOT of graphical errors (Oops, my legs are halfway in a rock now) and I wish they gave me an option to turn the flying on and off, as well as an option to name my island. But Island Sanctuary had me in a chokehold for days either way, and I can't wait until they update it with more content in the future! (I agree that the island felt somewhat small. )

[UkcsAlias]

I am not yet lvl 10 (started a bit later when the servers cooled down). But i can already say, that up to level 4 the balance is fine. Although quite a lot of work to set it up. And i think up to the first workshop it is intended to be easily doable in a single session.

But that it feels intentionaly slow in the wrong way, i do agree on. If you allow people to grind, they will, and some parts just conflict here. If they want slower progress, enforce it!

After that, you just feel artificialy walled in as the workshop doesnt work any faster. But here is also where the issues start for many reasons:
- As gathering gives xp, and the gap often requires an ammount that is well doable, you just promote manual gathering over waiting. This manual gathering is at that point also very inefficient (as you havent unlocked all tools yet). A daily gathering xp limit would have done a lot here to discourage farming xp and truly force a limit.
- The cropland and pasture are excessively slow for generating resources in the beginning, making them effectively non existing. Even more since the manual work makes their generation speed even slower. These could have easily been moved to a later point and it barely would even matter. But at least some early generation helps at kickstarting the workshop in efficiency by enabling more recipes early.
- The granary is unlocked relatively late, this should have been unlocked before the first landmark to give players automated resource generation! This is the best tool to promote waiting. Yet its given 3 levels after the workshop. For a casual player this can easily be a week later. I think they should have forced the workshop and granary to a limit of 1 for each at level 3. And only make level 4 available after both have been built.

Finetuning is needed a lot here. Since between level 4 and 8 the islands simply do not feel like a nice side activity. They instead feel like a big grind. And thats only because grinding is given as an option to rush through the levels.

[Boblawblah]

It does have that initial burst of progress to make you feel good and then that level 4 wall hits pretty hard. Reminds me of those mobile games lol.

[Illmaeran]

I've hit rank 8 as of this morning, and I've got a few things I want to say about this new piece of content. Aside from the fact that It should be more connected to the actual game and not so isolated as a piece of content, I can't believe how slow the progression is.

I have gathered enough to reach high end material gathering and I feel like time-gating rewards and being capped at 10 exp per gathering node is something that was decided upon without consideration for the player's time. It actually feels like the game doesn't respect my time or enjoyment. If I wanted to bite down on a burger but a restaurant didn't let me finish the other half I would be very upset. This is essentially what is happening.

I just want to enjoy this game, but the game doesn't want to let me by time-gating this much. I know I am not alone as I have seen very many posts and comments on how badly designed this content is. What changes would you like to see done to improve the experience?

Personally, I think it should take nowhere near a full day for the workshop to finish, and I don't appreciate crops taking so long, either. The last thing I would like is a bigger island. It really honestly doesn't feel as big as it was advertised at all. Only 2 underwater zones and such a limited amount of animals to raise.

The whole point is to have something super casual to do slowly. Look up Slow Life Japan; the whole movement is about getting away from the daily grind and overwork typical of normal Japanese company employment. Yoshi-P used that term when describing it early on. It's 100% intended to be slow, time-gated, and laid back. It's not supposed to be something to min/max totally optimize for efficiency and speed. If that's your thing, optimize as much as you can within the time gating constraints, and take solace in that. Otherwise, chill out, gather here and there to keep the workshops going and generating XP, and understand that it's content to do sporadically.

I'd love to replace the mammets with cat girls though, that'd be nice.

Ok, now THAT'S an awesome upgrade idea. Please let me have my all Roegadyn farmhand crew!

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy IS, but there's simply not enough things to do. Content is simply made to be played once, since there's no max rank mechanic which keeps you playing. Only feature you get at max rank is flying, which imo is terrible and doesn't fit "relaxing" sanctuary theme at all.

I finished Tataru's stuff and the new MSQ story in half a day. My island has given me more engagement time than that with many more hours to come in the future. From a purely time-spent metric, IS give you more to do than the main PVE foci of the 6.2 patch, if you don't count raid progression. Now that I've reached a certain point I can add it to my morning activities and get on with other things like roulettes, PVP grinding, and socializing in the evenings/weekends while still making good progress on island XP.

MMOs used to be about setting a personal goal; get a mount, rare item, or some other achievement and working on that, then moving on to something else. Islands let you set a goal of get enough cowries to buy X eventually. Rather than I MUST HAVE EVERYTHING NOW, why not set the goal of getting the hairstyle or Mandragora mount and spend the 15-20 minutes each day needed to make progress toward it? Even if you're the most inefficient player ever, you'll still get everything eventually. Take it one bite at a time and chew it rather than scarf it all down and risk choking.