Island Sanctuary is being discontinued?

[NekoMataMata]

It'll come back. A lot of the more casual community liked it, and I assume that if there's enough of them asking they'll bring it back.

It's probably really quick and easy for them to make updates for. They just have to create an excuse as to why they can't expand the housing options there.

[MAJRIS]

Because if they allowed instanced housing on the island, the money from subs due to forty five day log in or house go boom would drop to absolute zero and people could cancel their subs without fear of losing anything. Yoshi does not respect anyone's time except his own. As if IS was going to have housing.

the house RMT would drop as well. Crazy, right?

[ForteNightshade]

It'll still exist, but yeah outside of some extremely optimistic thinking they're basically abandoning further development of it in 7.0 as alluded to in some Q&A session, can't keep track of them all.
Saddest part is it really looked like they were laying the groundwork for genuine instanced housing. We got an enormous instanced front yard. There were housing frameworks in the system. And then they just stopped, lmao.

They were never going to turn it into instanced housing or anything remotely close. There's a reason all the buildings have very specific spots and only after two full years are getting the option to turn them 180 degrees. They want everything relatively static because it's significantly easier on server strain. Unfortunately, they thought for whatever reason making a sweatshop out of our "island paradise" would somehow excite players. Which has completely backfired. So they're abandoning ship and trying again with another form of lifestyle content. Can't say I'm entirely optimistic given Island Sanctuary was inspired by the dev team playing a lot of Animal Crossing. How they landed on what we got from Animal Crossing remains baffling to me.

[MAJRIS]

. Unfortunately, they thought for whatever reason making a sweatshop out of our "island paradise" would somehow excite players. Which has completely backfired. So they're abandoning ship and trying again with another form of lifestyle content. Can't say I'm entirely optimistic given Island Sanctuary was inspired by the dev team playing a lot of Animal Crossing.

That's interesting take. I don't want to waste your time but would you mind explaining why do you think it backfired?

just from my head:

I've been in my island but finding it too big with nothing around.
Zone for building is small with just pre-sets ( I don't like designs of some buildings)
If getting mats one by one means tens of thousands of clicking on the same stone to mine it, it does not excite me at all. (Even mobile mining games have upgrades like +1 yield or like +10% chance of getting X more.)
No idea how is the island instance related to server strain. Does it run on same instance server shard as something else? what are the possible issues/implications with too much of the island content?

if they will not keep expanding it with more minions or rewards from dawntrail like alternative way to get glamours, or minions, or furniture, then it's a little bit sad. Reminds me world of warcraft holiday events. They havent been updated for ages since 2015 and people wonder and complain why the queue times are too long.

[MsQi]

Good. Not sure why so much effort was put into this to begin with.

They're just gonna do something else like it.

[Khryseis_Astra]

They're just gonna do something else like it.

Maybe the next thing will have a real housing plot on it somewhere. lol

[Astrahime]

They said something that implied it wouldn't be continued in 7.x unless there was somehow a lot of demand for it.

This is normal and expected. They do not continue developing a feature like this once the expansion is over. Let me give you some examples...

• Palace of the Dead, released in Heavensward (3.x), did not continue development after 3.5x.
• Eureka, released in Stormblood (4.x), did not continue development after 4.5x.
• Bozja, released in Shadowbringers (5.x), did not continue development after 5.5x.
• Firmament, released in Shadowbringers (5.x), did not continue development after 5.5x.

Zadnor was literally in 5.55, Baldesion in 4.5, and there was a eureka numbers adjustment last major patch.
And it's funny for you to mention Palace of the Dead, since the Necromancer Title, which is obtained from soloing floor 200, was added in 4.0. And there's even Sage and Reaper weapons from it.

[Iscah]

Sad, because they could’ve really made some quality content if they continued developing it. But then, it’s not like they don’t have a track record for this sort of thing, so it’s not exactly surprising

What quality content?

They've "updated" it twice now and added nothing to the core gameplay.

First stage: Go out into the wilds, bang on rocks to get materials, come back and talk to the mammet to construct a long list of arbitrary items you don't get to keep or use, so one has no practical difference to any other. Interact with your 20 animals and 20 vegetables daily.

Second stage: Build a better tool so you can go out and bang on the same rocks and get new materials from them. Return to the mammet to construct a wider assortment of intangible items you don't get to keep. Interact with your 20 animals and 20 vegetables daily, including some new varieties with the exact same needs as the old ones.

Third stage: Bang on more rocks, now in a cave! Construct an even wider range of pointless items! Interact with your 20 animals and 20 vegetables daily!

Fourth stage: ???


For some reason, I'm not all that excited to see what we get next.

It brought us some pretty nice glam items and mounts

The thing is, we would have got nice glam items one way or another. They would have come through some other content if not through this.

Unfortunately, they thought for whatever reason making a sweatshop out of our "island paradise" would somehow excite players. Which has completely backfired. So they're abandoning ship and trying again with another form of lifestyle content. Can't say I'm entirely optimistic given Island Sanctuary was inspired by the dev team playing a lot of Animal Crossing. How they landed on what we got from Animal Crossing remains baffling to me.

All of this. I would bet that they wandered off the original vision in increments – needing something to enable crafting for players who didn't level their own skills, thinking of ways to make the content infinitely repeatable – but one way or another, they ended up quite far from the vision and either somehow don't see it or just never thought to evaluate it based on the original idea because they were too focused on how the system would work in the form it ended up in.

[Connor]

What quality content?

That was my point. It could’ve been good if they actually developed the concept, but instead we just got a boring sweatshop sim with some archaic material grinding stuff

[Fyrebrand]

Am I crazy, or didn't they say they were considering a similar form of content for Dawntrail? They aren't going to continue updating and developing the Island Sanctuary specifically, but that doesn't mean they can't give us a different area along the same lines to explore and develop. I feel like there was a lot of player interest in the concept of Island Sanctuary, having a "cozy farm/lifestyle sim" element, but that the exact form it ended up taking was underwhelming.

I think it would be better to try and start fresh with a new spin on the idea, rather than try and pile on updates to the old Island Sanctuary location.