Quote Originally Posted by SannaR View Post
I am a little sad that Island Sanctuary won't be continuing in 7.0 as it wasn't that bad and just needed a few improvements. Hopefully whatever the cozy lifestyle thing coming in 7.0 will take what they learned from Island Sanctuary and use it to give people a better experience. I guess those who insisted that we were going to be getting a 2nd Island were wrong. Part of its problem was a community problem in that we made it into a spreadsheet simulator and not deliver on things it never said it would be.
The improvements needed for the Island Sanctuary are so deep-seated that they really do need to start over to get rid of them. The unlikeable mammets who are the core of all the activities, the buildings explicitly designed to house mammets and not yourself, the lack of choice about covering your allegedly personal island with mandated facilities that take up loads of space, the emphasis on running your most profitable elements not through interacting with the island but by relying on a spreadsheet.

You can't lay the blame for "turning it into a spreadsheet simulator" on the players. The whole island channels into that spreadsheet – it's the way you convert materials into money and EXP so you can make progress, and the expectation to figure it out this excessively dense chart of supply and popularity for yourself is simply not fun.

The thing with these "side systems" is that it's not remotely the same genre as the action-RPG game we signed up to play, but things for the RPG (glamours, story interaction with characters) are locked behind this spreadsheet sim that has been dumped on us. Of course people aren't going to put the time into learning it unless this other gameplay style also appeals to them, which seems like a fairly limited number of FFXIV players.