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

[HeyMcFly]

While I agree IS should be better. NEEDS to be better.. I want it to be better. I don't know if Yoshi-P intends to improve upon the features of IS or is it a testing ground for something bigger in the future.
I'd love a roadmap of IS or more communication altogether about the future of IS.
But, Yoshi-P has said not to expect much- as far as it being like animal crossing or stardew valley, it was in reference to possible NPCs visiting & us being able to gather materials & nothing more.
He said if players showed interest in more NPCs visiting, he'd look into adding that feature.

Things I want to see in IS
Seasons. And us being able to select the season to display over our island. Like a late afternoon autumn or snowy getaway
Inviting NPCs (like Thancred, Aymeric, Estinien, etc.) & having more personal interactions that aren't just "nice island!" If you know what I mean. Like lowkey flirting options.
Mini games- like an event with island NPCs/ creatures where we take part in a series of mini games- island racing, flying, swimming & collecting things related to the event, along the way.
More island cosmetics & building cosmetics.
Item collectibles. Housing cosmetics, outfits, emotes, mounts etc.
New animals added to our island that give new materials. Unicorns, Dragons, Spriggans etc

Allow us to go venture onto uncharted islands to get materials & animals. Like a volcano island for example.

The rewards system in ffxiv just show how the devs only know 1 way of progressing & it's linear & very limited.

[NekoMataMata]

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.

I appreciate that they communicate these things to us, but lately it feels like they've been saying that about everything.

They told us relics were going to be like ARR while also telling us prior to the latest patch not to expect too much from them. Which is it?

And how long can we be expected to accept that as an answer before it just turns into an excuse that they use before they release before every piece of content?

[Asphhar]

Island Sanctuary is just a bigger version of the Warlords of Draenor garrisons. Except garrisons had a use outside of itself.

[Raoabolic]

Island Sanctuary is just a bigger version of the Warlords of Draenor garrisons. Except garrisons had a use outside of itself.

Not true!
IS gives you outdoor housing items. :^)

[Greyhawk]

I appreciate that they communicate these things to us, but lately it feels like they've been saying that about everything.

They told us relics were going to be like ARR while also telling us prior to the latest patch not to expect too much from them. Which is it?

And how long can we be expected to accept that as an answer before it just turns into an excuse that they use before they release before every piece of content?

I can't speak for the continuation of relics - I stopped caring about them during Bozja, so I stopped doing them. I missed the last Live Letter to see anything about the relic continuation specifics, and that's another thread entirely really.

I'm glad I did stop because I absolutely cannot stand the Manderville quest. It's at a point where I have to start the next section up in Foundation, and it's actually a quest I won't ever touch. But, I'm okay with that, even though I will miss out on the relics, I hate that questline even more. But I know what to expect of it, and what I'm missing out on. Just like those complaining about I.S. They knew it wasn't some elaborate thing, and were given exactly what to expect.

What have they applied this to, to mean 'everything'? I haven't seen anything along those lines other than SE development extending their releases by two additional weeks. That doesn't mean 'don't expect too much', that's just not getting content two weeks earlier. I do however recognize that some of the QoL things that were brought in can fall into that category - portraits, fashion accessory overload, even the Online Store and SE Store with items not being great quality and paying absurd amounts of money for trash. But, that's the culture. They don't base anything off Western audience for QoL, so there's that. There are also doomsayers on these forums that just portray doom and gloom - it's in every game. SWTOR has been dead for eight years now according to some on the forums, yet they have actually increased subs and that community is just as active as it was in beta. And, it's older than this game. So I don't get my 'news' from this forum, or even reddit because people just lay out foundations for doom and gloom. I can pick out at least two topics on the General Discussion right now that promote that. Okay, that is all well and good - but opinion vs. reality is overlooked often, and most act like some kind of gaming influence show host.

[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)

[Amh_Wilzuun]

People have been writing paragraphs of copium and telling people why they shouldn't be able to critique this content and yet NOT ONE person has defended the workshop system. That's how bad this system is and it's the main gamplay loop. Do you see the problem here?

[Allegor]

When it was announced I expected just some personal space where one could grow plants they otherwise wouldn't be able to without a FC/personal house and let their minions roam free like a pokemon daycare, since I recall they outright stated to not expect housing or something like AC.

... but the fact the island is entirely disconnected from the outside world (own currency, materials, etc) instantly told me "this will be entirely abandoned by 7.0"

[Amh_Wilzuun]

There were several comments made over a long period of time but probably the best known and most detailed was the response YoshiP made to an interview question from Shenpai during the Endwalker media tour.

The following is a transcript of the official translation:

So Yoshi P just says not to expect a game system on the level of a solo sim game like Animal Crossing, which if you read my original post is exactly what I said too:

IS was never gonna have nearly the depth of a standalone game like AC or stardew

This doesn't make the system immune from criticism however. As me and other people in the thread have expressed. I do think the right amount of resources was used on IS but said resources could have moved around better for a more engaging gameplay loop than workshop copy and paste.

In what way is it a weak argument? It is impossible for any game developer to make everyone happy with every piece of content they release.

It's okay to realize that you don't like something that you were hoping you would like. In your case, it seems like you set your expectations far too high because you were lacking information that was released in advance of the content release.

They're not going to go back and remake Island Sanctuary into a Stardew Valley because that was never their intent for the content.

Ater reading through the transcript, are you still certain you were the target audience for the content?

Yes telling me that it's my fault for wanting to like a piece of content and that I tricked myself into wanting it to be more fun is a very poor argument. I really don't think my expectations were high at all. I didn't expect my island getaway to boil down to copy paste from a discord server. Is it "sky high" expectations to want more than that?

And again, here's the yoshi p quote on the matter: Uh, I think a lot in-a lot of people are thinking that maybe uh Island Sanctuary will be something very akin to Animal Crossing, uh but Animal Crossing is really the product of many, many years of you know, uh, installments, very many iterations, much development, uh so a first and foremost I’d just like to say that uh please don’t expect something on that level uh because it will be a little bit tough for us uh in the team.

He's not saying it WON'T BE like animal crossing, just that it obviously won't be on the level of a standalone game which, again, is literally something I already said too. He didn't say "no it's a completely different type of experience from AC, instead I would liken it to microsoft excel with an island theme".

As i've said people are bending over to defend this content with out of context dev quotes and telling people they are in the wrong for being excited for it and yet no one has addressed the core flaws of workshop. "Noooo don't expect gameplay like harvest moon or SDV idiot!" Okay what should I expect then? Are you really okay with the braindead workshop system? That's your idea of acceptable?

[Themarvin]

In short this is FFXIV now Stardew Valley... if want more of that mentioned, then why do you bother about FFXIV or even the implementation of Island Sanctuary at all?

Some people do not like Eureka... others like it.... some people don't like deep dungeons... others likes... some does it for completing things... others makes it a part of their game.

And there is a list of quite a bunch of activities that some like and some does not at all, you can't keep everyone happy as it is.