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

[R041]

So what would you have done to make it content that gives horizontal repeatable gameplay without it being a huge grind?

Sure, I think it's a good exercise.

It would be better if it had full decorations, but the gameloop doesn't need it. A major part in designing repeatability and engaging content, as much as we don't want to admit it - Is randomization, unique rewards, and patterns.

The core issue is that Island Sanctuary hides vertical progression in the guise of horizontal progression. Like catching creatures - in an ideal world the creatures you capture shouldn't have a linear affect on your overall sales performance. It should be about how YOU want to progress, and how YOU want to show off your farm. Even the fact that the rare animals give better rewards means you're incentivized to only have rare animals.

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1. Right off the bat, we fail this by making sure that everyone's Island is exactly the same down to when it rains, and when what creatures spawn.
We should not be able to predict the gameplay as if it were a Hunt Train, or you're going to get Hunt Train mentality.

2. Feed quality to increase the odds of more rewards and a chance of rares is fine, and incentivizes you to take better care of your animals overall - Though I think happiness should be a longer process.
The only multi-day activities should be Feeding and Crops.

3. Selling Leavings, Crops, and Crafts is a big part of Farm type games. But I don't think each players' markets should match, I also don't think they should be in a real world cycle. It should change based on the in-game days so that I'm not heavily penalized by not matching the meta. It means I have more chances to sell my goods at a decent price. What I mean by this is that if I'm wrong about what I farmed for that week, I still might have some period where I'm correct enough to get a decent return and can sell on my own time. I should not be able to see tomorrow's predictions, just what my current day's values are and I can pull the trigger on sales if I want.

4. Time-gating for building structures in general isn't* horrible, this in itself has never really been a problem for farm games. It's how you start building that structure, and what the prior gate is.
The gate is Experience and Materials. I almost feel like the whole Gathering system is just not good for this type of game and it incentivizes an actual grind. I'd rather the meta-progression be 100% Growing and Crafting, so you know it's chill.

5. Capturing animals is kinda neat in itself, but I feel could be possible to keep even with a smaller map with no gathering. Or you just buy animals as they're young, and grow them. Then you'd have a random salesman come by with baby creatures.

6. We need guests, remove the mammets and give me some random guests, I'd even welcome Alphy if he comes by to give me a random feed for my pets.

7. We also need to remove the typical XIV Rewards. I think Glam is fine? But it shouldn't even give me the option to buy Materia, or any Tradeables. That already incentivizes a grind and reward structure that's influenced by XIV.

8. Also, also - Just how every interaction with everything is designed. It's like pulling teeth just doing basic actions that should be chill. Everything is a prompt. Everything is a double prompt. That's not fun, it's tedious, it's frustrating. Let me walk over my crops and click a button to water all of them in a square. Why do I need to click them all individually? Why is my only other option to ALSO click all of them individually in an automation mammet? It again incentivizes AFK pre-planning with how just tedious the stuff that SHOULD be chill is.

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There's not enough random, it's all predictable and linear. I don't feel like it's a farm game, I feel like it's a spreadsheet with how it presents itself. It was designed in a way to be bursted and then AFKed for a week. The systems it gives us makes everything predictable and unfun as a gameloop. I have no incentive to really care for my animals, I don't care about my crops, and I don't need to care about what I sell. The game does all of that for me.

Anyway, everything needs to play off of the Crops, Animals, and a couple of Shops that rotate goods to buy/sell and respect the players' ability to actually play the game, and not just excel it to death. It doesn't really do that, it incentivizes me to go click on rocks, and pre-plan more than anything.

I'm absolutely addicted to Harvest Moon games, and Stardew Valley. It's like XIV managed to get all of the components we wanted, but in just the wrong order. So it kinda just feels like SE ripped the face off of a Farming game and is wearing it. It's as lifeless as Fashion Report.

I still applaud them for trying though.

(Sorry I keep editing, I realize I need to clean up the rambling)

[Alleo]

Sure, I think it's a good exercise.

Thank you for taking your time to give me a answer.

I am not really sure though if it being more random really makes it better. (At least not for me) The only time I even used the internet was for getting help with the 16k achievement and even there I just finally learned how it worked and did most of the stuff myself. After I got the achievement I bascially went back to doing whatever I wanted to do and right now I probably produce something with a very bad outcome but I plan to use the items I have the most at the moment. I am quite over 100k of the currency while having bought everything already. And all that by barely being meta. I did not do the maths for production, I just mostly used 4 hours with 8 hours crafts and even that has now changed to being mostly random. I dont even look at how the market is going.

So I just dont see how it would make it better for me to have it truly random. After all it already feels random enough for me right now. I dont care for other peoples island and what they do with it. I dont hang out in the reddit threads about the weekly best workshop schedule. But I am also fine with that existing for those that love to min max. I just dont feel like its necessary at all to enjoy the island. I would find a daily reset without the possibilty of really planning it ahead way more stressful especially for those that want to do the best. It would imo mean that suddenly you are forced to visit the island every single day (and depending how long you work you will lose out a lot of the time slots too if the workshop stays the same) just to make maybe four clicks. For some of course that is better but I would find that tedious.

I do agree with randoms NPCs showing up and I would love to have a system where you can raise animals. Heck I would love if this could be used to train and hang out with your chocobo. Or maybe we are able to raise up future mounts that we than either use for us or to sell to players.

So I guess if we get more interaction with animals it would make it perfect. I am not that much into taking care of crops and the workshop so I dont really want something more to do there.

[R041]

...

I don't think it's necessarily the random that makes Harvest Moon great, but the Island Sanctuary gameloop is so disrespectful of our ability to play games in general.

It's mostly the Workshop and Gathering system that pushes it into the shit zone.

Imagine playing Harvest Moon, but the difference is the structure gate is by exp, and exp is gained by hitting a rock a thousand times. Then you go to sell your goods to the city, and instead of engaging with anyone and nobody has anything new to say or exchange, it's a billboard with the whole real life week's ups and downs. So you play it like a stock market then AFK for the week.

That is why it's dull.

They're just going to add more burst verticality to it, and that just doesn't seem very fun?

This whole expansion has just been designed to be burst grind then AFK. It's such a weird concept, and makes me feel like nobody even wants to play or do anything in XIV for longer than an hour a month.

Also, I think the best comparison here is probably Harvest Moon SNES, it has the basic gameplay without all of the extra fluff. So that's what I'm gauging an interesting gameloop off of here. I still play it.