Island Reflections

[Iscah]

It's a much slower way to earn the cowries but it can be done.

I know, and that my point.

The fact that doing farming activities is a slower route than managing the spreadsheet indicates that the spreadsheet is the intended and expected way of approaching the content, and if you don't want to engage with it then you have to settle for a slower way of earning cowries.

Also, even if you don't want to engage with it, your entire island is still structured around it. You can leave the workshops idle but they're still there clanking away and being the core feature of your hideaway.

[Deveryn]

You don't even have to follow the supply and demand charts to make money. Just run any recipes through the workshop and you'll get your weekly bonus of 1000.

[Krotoan]

The fact that doing farming activities is a slower route than managing the spreadsheet indicates that the spreadsheet is the intended and expected way of approaching the content, and if you don't want to engage with it then you have to settle for a slower way of earning cowries.
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Players optimizing the fun out of something does not mean that is the intended or expected way to approach it. If so then every mechanic skip ever is the "intended" way to do that encounter because it's the fastest way.

It's fine you don't like it. It's fine if LOTS of people don't like it or don't want to engage with it or wish something else was made instead of it.

What I'm tired of is people acting like the island failed to be something it was never meant to be or that it's locked behind a rigorous and grueling grind.


I haven't read one guide. I have no idea what time the "special" animals spawn. I don't know what the optimal product cycle is or even what exactly "groove" does. I did however discover for myself the basics of drops, groove and setting automation for the week so i can pop in for a couple minutes a day to click some stuff and rack up some currency.

I may not be the first with the expensive mount, but I'll have it eventually. I'll also eventually have every single other reward there with a few minutes "invested" every day or maybe 30 minutes a week popping in to click my auto-farmed stacks through. The system literally churns time into blue cowries. Everything waits if you ignore it too. The animals drop to baseline mood and the plants just stop growing. If you wished you could just send out your gatherers for an entire week and then next week exclusively produce the "expensive" recipe that used the rare from those gatherings and make back enough to do it all over again and you'd still accrue materials in excess that you could mill for more cowries than you spent.

Come back to it later.


There's no reason to have it all NOW. There's no reason you need it FIRST. If you choose to put stock in those values you need to be ready to invest unusually.

[Iscah]

What I'm tired of is people acting like the island failed to be something it was never meant to be or that it's locked behind a rigorous and grueling grind.

The thing is, "managing a factory" feels like it is a thing that the island was never meant to be.

On the one level, sure, they put it in there so it is what the content is. But it feels so much at odds with how the content was advertised (slow life, farming) that it feels like it must be the end product of some sort of feature creep where they started out trying to invent a crafting system for non-crafters and ended up far away from their intended big-picture concept, then never took a critical eye over it to make sure it lined up with the original vision.

It's not that it's a grind, but the story in which they've encased the grind doesn't fit the setting.

[Deveryn]

The thing is, "managing a factory" feels like it is a thing that the island was never meant to be.

On the one level, sure, they put it in there so it is what the content is. But it feels so much at odds with how the content was advertised (slow life, farming) that it feels like it must be the end product of some sort of feature creep where they started out trying to invent a crafting system for non-crafters and ended up far away from their intended big-picture concept, then never took a critical eye over it to make sure it lined up with the original vision.

It's not that it's a grind, but the story in which they've encased the grind doesn't fit the setting.

It's not at all at odds with how things were advertised. They even talked about placing multiple buildings. The hint was right there. You're free to do whatever whenever. The mammets are there to do the work for you in building up the area. They can take care of your animals and crops, so you don't have to check it everyday. Without the "factory" there's no real purpose to the island. The story they put together fits well enough, imo. Who better to introduce all this than Tataru?

[Krotoan]

On the one level, sure, they put it in there so it is what the content is. But it feels so much at odds with how the content was advertised (slow life, farming) that it feels like it must be the end product of some sort of feature creep where they started out trying to invent a crafting system for non-crafters and ended up far away from their intended big-picture concept, then never took a critical eye over it to make sure it lined up with the original vision.

While the scope may be not quite what everyone envisioned with "lazy island getaway", it's overall engageable at whatever level you wish: If you never set any plans but just grow crops, feed animals, and sell the surplus you will get the same rewards someone who spreadsheet micromanage crazygathergrinded did. Just much much slower. Considering we have no idea when it will be updated, chances are you have months to get it all as well before anything new rears it's head.

It's not that it's a grind, but the story in which they've encased the grind doesn't fit the setting.

You mean that it's incongruent that Tataru turned our vacation and solitude into a moneymaking opportunity?
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Have you met our diminutive partner? Are you aware she can squeeze a gil piece so hard actual aether leaks out?




Overall I see a lot of problems with it let alone why the heck the green cowries even exist.. and I do see a lot of good suggestions in how to improve it like maybe have the pasture not be a torturous boring expanse of pure sunburn, so when I see people grouse about how it either isn't perfect or is some sort of difficult to engage with and heavy timesink.. I like to review exactly what their problems are.

[Rokke]

Ive finally gotten around to putting a little time into Tataru's island and what jumped out most to me was the lack of customization. Emphasis on it being Tataru's island because it certainly does not feel like its mine. I didn't expect it to be anywhere in the ballpark of animal crossing but we can't really make the island unique past picking what minions you want to set loose on the beach...and while I guess that was one of the touted features, its pretty disappointing that thats the lone feature I enjoy in it.

the "incorrect" comparison to animal crossing is funny because IS lacks all the aspects of animal crossing I enjoy and the mammet market angle feels turnip exchangey which is my LEAST fav part of animal crossing lol

[Deveryn]

Overall I see a lot of problems with it let alone why the heck the green cowries even exist.. and I do see a lot of good suggestions in how to improve it like maybe have the pasture not be a torturous boring expanse of pure sunburn, so when I see people grouse about how it either isn't perfect or is some sort of difficult to engage with and heavy timesink.. I like to review exactly what their problems are.

After enough harvesting you start to see why they exist. They're basically there to keep the "you can't harvest" messages at bay. Except for the firecracker, everything on the vendor is what you get from standard gathering / crafting.

[Jojoya]

The thing is, "managing a factory" feels like it is a thing that the island was never meant to be.

On the one level, sure, they put it in there so it is what the content is. But it feels so much at odds with how the content was advertised (slow life, farming) that it feels like it must be the end product of some sort of feature creep where they started out trying to invent a crafting system for non-crafters and ended up far away from their intended big-picture concept, then never took a critical eye over it to make sure it lined up with the original vision.

It's not that it's a grind, but the story in which they've encased the grind doesn't fit the setting.

It is simply one piece of content out of many on the island, with the island itself being one piece of content out of many in the game.

Choose what you want to do based on what you enjoy.

For you it might be out of line for what you think the original vision was because you associate that sort of content with work. Others in very different career fields may find it relaxing because it's different from what they do at work.

The story does fit the setting. We're trying to establish new settlements in uninhabited territory. No settlements survive well or long unless they establish outside trade. In in more primitive societies, the most profitable ones have always been those related to refined goods (spices, metals, and the like) or manufactured goods (textiles, pottery, arms and armor, medicines, etc. - you know, the same items being produced by the workshops).

Even living in paradise, there are things that must be done to support life. In this case, the mammets in the workshops are doing most of that work. You don't want to do that work? That's fine, you don't have to.

Did you really want life on your Sanctuary to be like that of Tom Hanks' character in Castaway? Sure, it might be nice to have a Wilson minion for a companion but the rest of life would be very harsh.

Overall I see a lot of problems with it let alone why the heck the green cowries even exist.. and I do see a lot of good suggestions in how to improve it like maybe have the pasture not be a torturous boring expanse of pure sunburn, so when I see people grouse about how it either isn't perfect or is some sort of difficult to engage with and heavy timesink.. I like to review exactly what their problems are.

Fairly certain the green cowries exist so players don't feel like the normal gathered materials are going to waste. They still get something for any excess they end up with. As long as players don't focus too heavily on just one or two foraging sectors, there will probably be little need for any manual gathering with a level 10 island.

I've already made about 7k islanders cowries and bought up Hi-Cordial with them since I go thru that pretty fast when on my DoH gathering binges. That lets me save scrip for things the cowries won't buy.

For those who don't have DoH classes leveled or don't gather heavily, they can always get glamour prisms/dispellers with them.

[Kaliesto]

I love it so far, but yes I can see this needing some critiques.

Moving your buildings around freely anywhere you want would be a start, I guess the reason why they can't do that though is because of the spawns that would get in the way.

Maybe having options building on water would be good as there isn't much there to get in the way.