What island sanctuary doesn't get about games like Animal Crossing/Stardew Valley.

[ameliaw]

Why is it people are expecting so much out of I.S. when SquareEnix literally stated:



It's obvious they are going to add something like things you can buy from the vendors there. There's no reason to expect anything else. There's no reason to expect more out of it than what they said.

Some of you want the moon, and you were told you can't get anything more than a rock.
Now you are talking about "what they can save or fix" it.

No, blood still isn't coming out of the turnip.

You understand that this isn't a good defense of the content, right? It's just embarassing that they said "oh don't expect much" from one of this expansion's main contents. When they said that I thought that they were talking about the people expecting instanced housing and something with as much depth as a full game. All I(and many others) expected was an enjoyable experience. It is worse than a free browser game.

It lacks QOL. Lacks any customization. Farming is poor. Collecting materials until you have your granaries set is a clicking nightmare and after that you spend 10 min a week on it tops, because there is nothing left to do. The only good thing to come out of it are the cosmetics and frankly they might as well have added them as rewards for something else.

[R041]

Is it really fair to compare it to games that soley exist for that one purpose while Island Sanctuary is bascially just one of the many side contents in this game?
Would I be against being able to customize your own island? Of course not. I do hope that we are able to decorate the island with outside housing items. Otherwise I am fine with the content as it is. Something that I visit a few times each week, spend some time there but otherwise go on with other content. If I had to go there every single day for months to get anywhere near some of the rewards it would feel like a chore. Right now its something relaxing to do when I want to do it (and all the other days my puppets keep it running)

It is fair, because the amount of content is basically the same as some single player games, just re-ordered in such a way to be a vertical grind with 0 imagination.

Why is it that people can only comprehend that the content needs to be non-repeatable, OR so repeatable that you feel the urge to login every single minute of every single day to survive as a human being? Is the MMO brain so rotten, that you can't even understand how a video game can be a comfortable, leisure activity, with repeatable aspects to it? The thing we've seen in a lot of other video games in our history? Is it being an MMO mean it needs to be blood sucking or dull?

I don't even really care about the decoration portion of it. It's just.. Not good repeatable content with how they've designed the verticality of it and the turn-ins for a grind. They literally min-maxed it before giving it to us is the problem.

It's just another system with force-feed verticality. They literally do not understand how to make horizontal, repeatable gameplay. Because the only thing they can think about is "How can we waste their time and put in Materia as a reward?"

I would almost rather they just make all rewards from Island Sanctuary be Untradable, and remove Materia if it means it removes the vertical min-maxing they've done for us. Because now we know the design has been influenced with how rewarding they think it is to the overall game. Which sucks all the fun out of it.

If Island Sanctuary wasn't so influenced by the outside XIV rewards system, then it wouldn't have been designed the way it is.

[Xirean]

The game needs more side content that we can keep coming back to. Replay value is essential in an MMO setting. This should have been a slam dunk in that regard, and it wasn't. Just because they said "Yeah...don't expect much" doesn't mean we should settle for mediocrity. The player base settling for mediocrity is how we got here in the first place.

I don't really see how it is mediocre. We were given enough information to inform expectations and it pretty much did exactly what it was stated to deliver. It's also already gotten an update that slotted rather seamlessly which shows that it is content that has the potential to grow further with future updates. Honestly the more time I spend here on the forums the more it sounds like people want the game to punish you for not being "up to date and relevant" with basically every piece of side content that is in it. The game doesn't do that. It's got a lot of side pieces that you can choose to dig into as much as you want but none are nearly as full as the MSQ which makes sense.

What you call mediocre are things that people like and are satisfied with to one degree or another. Genuinely, what is the problem?

[Vahlnir]

You understand that this isn't a good defense of the content, right? It's just embarassing that they said "oh don't expect much" from one of this expansion's main contents. When they said that I thought that they were talking about the people expecting instanced housing and something with as much depth as a full game. All I(and many others) expected was an enjoyable experience. It is worse than a free browser game.

It lacks QOL. Lacks any customization. Farming is poor. Collecting materials until you have your granaries set is a clicking nightmare and after that you spend 10 min a week on it tops, because there is nothing left to do. The only good thing to come out of it are the cosmetics and frankly they might as well have added them as rewards for something else.

Yep. Well said.

[Raven2014]

The player base settling for mediocrity is how we got here in the first place.

Mileage and expectation varies, depending on what a person looking for in a game. You don't get to set the standard for how people should feel about it. I feel the way I am solely base on how the game meeting "my expectation", not based on an arbitrary set of standard setting by someone else. Personally, I prefer to have a content that you can do for a while but eventually can say "ok I'm done" and move to others, rather than having it's filled with content that you essentially are married to.

For example, someone may say a Ferrari is a superior car to a Toyota. Sure, it can be if you talk about value, craftmanship, speed, prestige .etc. But if you're someone like me who don't like to ride fast, don't care about impressing others nor having a lot of money, then a Toyota is a "superior" choice in most aspect that "relevant" to me.

[Chasingstars]

I stop by, check on my plants and animals every couple of days, put in some work orders, get blue cowries. Really chill stuff especially since I am at the max rank at the moment. Aside from the non marketable rewards like mounts and pets, I get stuff like glamour prisms and materia for basically free without having to pay jacked up prices on patch days. Most of my island sanctuary inventory is capped or near it and what room I make I just export and get more cowries.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

Why is it people are expecting so much out of I.S. when SquareEnix literally stated:



Some of you want the moon, and you were told you can't get anything more than a rock.
Now you are talking about "what they can save or fix" it.

No, blood still isn't coming out of the turnip.

Is it really fair to compare it to games that soley exist for that one purpose while Island Sanctuary is bascially just one of the many side contents in this game?

There’s a reason I prefaced with saying that is completely unrealistic to expect a side activity to have the depth of a full fledged separate game, but like I said the gameplay loops devolves into a discord copy and paste which is disappointing. I don’t think I am asking for a lot when island sanctuary is one of the MAIN endgame content systems for the entire expansion. It just doesn’t have the depth of past systems like Bozja and the firmament as an endgame system. Even with their flaws they keep people engaged for longer. I’m just pointing out that the system doesn’t have the base sort of gameplay loop that keeps farming sims or life sims engaging and replayable. I think being able to continuously improve your farming and gathering capabilities would be more fun than what we have now. Stuff like unlocking automation and the tool recipes were a step in the right direction

[Raven2014]

You understand that this isn't a good defense of the content, right? It's just embarassing that they said "oh don't expect much" from one of this expansion's main contents.

I'm sorry but this is 9 part out of 10 the community fault. I mean ... have you seen the ridiculous level of expectation people have for IS when it came out? Some people thought it would be private housing, some thought it gonna be the harvest moon of FF14. Stuffs that they never said it to be but the community go ahead and decide it for themselves. It felt like everyone with some gribs with the game was expecting IS is the magic bullet that will fix all of their issue.


Imagine you're just a regular salary man who's about to meet your gf's parent for the first time next week. Suddenly you start hearing rumor and story in the air that you are actually a doctor or CEO with 7 digits salary simple because the parents thought you must someone like that if their daughter fell for you.

I see it less about SE tried to tell people not to expect much, rather them just trying to tell those players to stop making stuff up.

[ameliaw]

I'm sorry but this is 9 part out of 10 the community fault. I mean ... have you seen the ridiculous level of expectation people have for IS when it came out? Some people thought it would be private housing, some thought it gonna be the harvest moon of FF14. Stuffs that they never said it to be but the community go ahead and decide it for themselves. It felt like everyone with some gribs with the game was expecting IS is the magic bullet that will fix all of their issue.


Imagine you're just a regular salary man who's about to meet your gf's parent for the first time next week. Suddenly you start hearing rumor and story in the air that you are actually a doctor or CEO with 7 digits salary simple because the parents thought you must someone like that if their daughter fell for you.

I see it less about SE tried to tell people not to expect much, rather them just trying to tell those players to stop making stuff up.

In my comment I expanded on that. Again, my complaint and many others's complaint is that the content is bad despite the lack of stellar expectations.

Now, they didn't HAVE to do that, but perhaps they should have paid attention to what the playerbase was actually asking for too. I'd guess that the majority would have preferred instanced housing.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

I'm sorry but this is 9 part out of 10 the community fault. I mean ... have you seen the ridiculous level of expectation people have for IS when it came out? Some people thought it would be private housing, some thought it gonna be the harvest moon of FF14. Stuffs that they never said it to be but the community go ahead and decide it for themselves. It felt like everyone with some gribs with the game was expecting IS is the magic bullet that will fix all of their issue.

I see it less about SE tried to tell people not to expect much, rather them just trying to tell those players to stop making stuff up.

I think people are getting too hung up on the housing thing. Yes some people did think that IS would be housing which is silly, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t agree that people were expecting the moon for this content, they were expecting chill repeatable content in the vein of a farming or life game which is not unreasonable at all, and the original announcement screamed animal crossing influences.

I do think the appropriate amount of resources were allocated to this content as well, but it just flattered in the design department. Namely the workshop system is badly designed and not engaging. I was just disappointed when I realized that the island experience ends with turning into a discord simulator. They could have used the same resources but just better designed the gameplay loop to be more like what works in games like a harvest moon and stardew with an XIV twist. I also want to emphasize yet again that I am not expecting something nearly as deep as those games for side content in an mmo but c’moon give us something that isn’t copy paste from discord. The materials I got from initially building my island means I barely even need to gather anymore for my workshop week to week. It’s basically just a 5 min weekly until I get the remaining rewards