Island sanctuary doesn't feel right.

[Oizen]

What content was in the concept art that is missing from my island?

[Jojoya]

That is reading one heck of a lot into concept art, thus proving my point. Thank you.

Have you just considered like.. people are happy with the rewards so far and they aren't happy with the way island sanctuary functions? It's not just you have to like it or you don't, you know. It's not black and white like your mind seems to think. I like the glam and mount rewards, it doesn't mean that I think island sanctuary is great by any means right now.

I think most players, at least NA and EU, agree the Island ends up missing the mark on presentation mostly thanks to the mammets but also due to the very limited customization. I had asked back when it was first released what the JP player base thinks of the mammets and one of the regular posters who also visits the JP forums said they seemed to enjoy them.

Could it be much better? Of course. Is it still possible to enjoy what it is? Yes.

[Oizen]

That is reading one heck of a lot into concept art, thus proving my point. Thank you.

I should have realized the horse in the concept art was a metaphorical horse.

[Padudu]

That is reading one heck of a lot into concept art, thus proving my point. Thank you.


I think most players, at least NA and EU, agree the Island ends up missing the mark on presentation mostly thanks to the mammets but also due to the very limited customization. I had asked back when it was first released what the JP player base thinks of the mammets and one of the regular posters who also visits the JP forums said they seemed to enjoy them.

Could it be much better? Of course. Is it still possible to enjoy what it is? Yes.

I mean yeah? I don't get what your point is. If you enjoy it, good for you. I'll only slightly judge you, but hey, judgements are small from lalafells by default (or maybe it's normal for you?). I don't really care about the mammets, they're whatever IMO. My main problem is that the content that is there is bare bones and once you max you're literally just talking to the mammets once a day and then leaving said island. If the bar for island sanctuary being good content is "I can get crafting materia from it", I think it just speaks for itself lol

[Iscah]

That is reading one heck of a lot into concept art, thus proving my point. Thank you.

I'm not reading anywhere near as much into it as that, but it really is not giving the vibe of what we got.

That image tells me "this content will be about you and your minions on a farm". The farm is the whole focus of the image and so implied to be the focus of the content, as we were told to expect from the start.

Instead the farm is a few tiny rows shoved in a corner, not the wide-open field in the image, and the overall vibe is completely different. The farm isn't the focus, it's a waypoint in the process of feeding all our gathering efforts into a mammet factory crafting arbitrary goods that nobody actually gets to use.

Also, while reading "custom feeders" into it seems a stretch, it does seem a bizarre thing that our animals get no food unless we feed them by hand. Why are there no feeding troughs we can pre-load for them? And why always vegetables! We should be feeding rocks to the coblyns and fish to the alligator.

(And yeah, where's my horse mount? Why aren't we getting that from here instead of the motorbike?)


I wasn't expecting furniture placement, by the way. Those scarecrows are seen out in the fields around La Noscea often enough to not read anything into it.


Edit to add: I also think it's not simply an image to be dismissed as "concept art", at least in the usual meaning of it being a rough idea in the early stages of brainstorming. This is a completed, detailed image that they used to advertise forthcoming content – something they were already working on and wanting us to be excited about. If they're going to use an image in that way, then you expect it to be evoking the core aspects of the content, which were also the talking points getting brought up in those presentations: slow life, free-roaming minions on your personal farm. Not the farm you are building to keep the mammets happy.

Like ... I'm ok with the content amount, I'm actually happy with the reward. It's just the aesthetic and thematic execution seem to be all on the wrong notes. This piece of content seem to be something that was envisioned by a therapist or environmentalist but the design is handed to an oil CEO.

That is the best summary of the vibe I get from it, yeah. There's way too much "muahaha destroy all the nature!" vibe from those mammets (and indeed our own dialogue choices when we get them) and it grates on me every time.

And yeah, there's no part of the hideaway that's actually for us, besides one scrappy bed behind a screen in a corner.

Also the "mammets not humans" thing only works if they actually are mindless robots who carry out assigned tasks for you, not magical entities that show distinct personalities, doubly so when a lot of those personalities seem unwilling to work without human-like motivation of payment and recreational facilities.