Island Sanctuary feels intentionally slow and inefficient.

[Jojoya]

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!

Not at all but you need to keep in mind that day one sales also include all pre-order sales. Companies have to include all pre-orders as part of their day one sales data since technically they did not have a product to sell until the official release date.

Now can you tell me why day one sales figures get so high for games that don't just turn out to be broken after the fact but had testers saying were broken (usually even if they're supposed to be under a NDA)?

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.

What do you mean nothing to do at rank 10? There's an entire economic mini-game based around generating seafarer's cowries through the Workshop. That's going to be very appealing to both players who want the items purchased with the cowries and those who enjoy wealth accumulation simulators.

There are about 100,000 cowries' worth of unique rewards plus the dyes and materia to buy once you have everything else you want. I've got friends already groaning over having to save 24k cowries for the bike.

Most players who want all those rewards are probably going to need until close to the release of 6.3 to obtain them, at which point SE will be adding more content and no doubt more rewards.

Again, not content that is going to appeal to everyone but certainly there are going to be players participating for quite a while into the future.

[Liam_Harper]

so you want to do all content in one day.

I feel like you're the type of player who burns through stuff then complain that there's nothing to do.
And I still don't see why you can't play other games in between but just you being weirdly anal about it.

I'll never understand this argument.

It is absolutely normal to want to play something a ton when it's just out. I personally love when I get a new game or content release and it's so good I end up just playing it all night and can't put it down. It's a rare occasional indulgence, not an unhealthy habit and the best moments in gaming when a game gives you that feeling.

That's what players want. There were so many "I'll never leave my island" comments just before and around release. They like having something that hooks them in. It's fun. It feels great.

In ff14 the developers have twisted it into some sort of sin, where they deny you that and pretend it's for your own good and then certain players latch onto it and parrot it over and over. Nonsense. I'm not going to pretend I don't want something to be so fun I play it to death for a while. Because I certainly do.

[ReynTime]

Yes you're missing this

Haha
Meeeemes
Hey fellow kids, I know about your maymays too!

[Deo14]

What do you mean nothing to do at rank 10? There's an entire economic mini-game based around generating seafarer's cowries through the Workshop. That's going to be very appealing to both players who want the items purchased with the cowries and those who enjoy wealth accumulation simulators.

There are about 100,000 cowries' worth of unique rewards plus the dyes and materia to buy once you have everything else you want. I've got friends already groaning over having to save 24k cowries for the bike.

Most players who want all those rewards are probably going to need until close to the release of 6.3 to obtain them, at which point SE will be adding more content and no doubt more rewards.

Again, not content that is going to appeal to everyone but certainly there are going to be players participating for quite a while into the future.

Mini-game is appealing to me, except the fact that you cannot use supply and demand window together with actual recipe window, which really discouraged me from doing it myself. I don't want to spend hour just clicking back and forth between these 2 windows, only because I don't remember whether this specific recipe out of 50 takes 4/6/8 hours. One way or the other, most people will end up using calculator or in best case use their own excel sheet. So in the end, it's just something that you spend doing 10 minutes per week.

Since they kept talking about all the casual experience, I expected something more casual than excel simulator. Something actually interactive, for example some fishing mini-game, some more engaging gathering, where you need to find specific materials which is RNG generated or really anything more engaging that 10 minutes per week or pointless gathering. Pasture/cropland could be more interactive too, not just switching to certain mode and clicking on each animal/crop you have.

[Skivvy]

I'll never understand this argument.

It is absolutely normal to want to play something a ton when it's just out. I personally love when I get a new game or content release and it's so good I end up just playing it all night and can't put it down. It's a rare occasional indulgence, not an unhealthy habit and the best moments in gaming when a game gives you that feeling.

That's what players want. There were so many "I'll never leave my island" comments just before and around release. They like having something that hooks them in. It's fun. It feels great.

In ff14 the developers have twisted it into some sort of sin, where they deny you that and pretend it's for your own good and then certain players latch onto it and parrot it over and over. Nonsense. I'm not going to pretend I don't want something to be so fun I play it to death for a while. Because I certainly do.

SE has trained their rabid loyal fanbase well.

[Ronduwil]

I'm trying to give it some time, but so far a lot of it feels pointless. I have zero idea what I'm aiming for or what the connections/benefits to the rest of the game will be if any.

Then you haven't even looked at the vendors yet. There are minions, orchestrion rolls, glamour items, hair styles, chocobo barding, and housing furniture that you can purchase with cowries. In the long term, it also provides a source of Hi-Cordial for gathering, in addition to supplying high level crafting/gathering materia.

If you don't care about housing, glamour, gathering, or crafting, then it's probably only relevant to you in terms of purchasing materia and cordial that you can put on the market for lots of gil.

[Iscah]

What do you mean nothing to do at rank 10? There's an entire economic mini-game based around generating seafarer's cowries through the Workshop. That's going to be very appealing to both players who want the items purchased with the cowries and those who enjoy wealth accumulation simulators.

You're confusing "appealing" with "necessary".

I don't find the economic mini-game remotely appealing, but if I wanted everything then my only real options are to engage with it or face a slow grind to earn it all by selling leavings and whatever produce I don't have to spend making animal feed.

[Ronduwil]

I don't get why you're using casuals as a defense of time gates. If anything, the fact that this game is catered to casuals should mean time gates are more harmful. Wouldn't it be better if it was more flexible and less time gated so that casuals could spend time playing when they wanted? Imagine spending the whole week bogged down by work/school work + the rest of life and you just want to spend the weekend relaxing and building up your IS. Then you hit a couple of time gates and you can't do anything super meaningful with it for most of that free time.

I'm not a fan of time gates, either, but I don't think the gates in this case are too obnoxious, considering the nature of the content. It's not intended as a replacement for the rest of the game. It's just something to do while queueing for your duty roulette or waiting for raid time. Even Animal Crossing, whose entire focus is the town-building, is riddled with time gates.

If you want to play content of this nature with IRL time-gating removed, I highly recommend Stardew Valley. Eric Barone implemented a genius design that limits the time you can spend within an in-game day so that the focus of the game becomes maximizing the way you spend each in game-day. As many have said, Animal Crossing is a game you play every day. Stardew Valley is a game you play all day. In other words, you can play as many Stardew Valley 14 minute and 20 second game days as you can fit into your session. It is, IMO, the best of both worlds.