Why does "The Island of my Dreams" look exactly like everyone elses?

[Kisshu]

Even with the current system they could have made more effort in some cosmetic customizations.

For the workshops, have different types you can select. One is the current mill, another would be a kitchen, a smithy, a furniture workshop, alchemist lab and so on.
Then for the granaries it could be a storehouse/barn, or a toolshed with mining or woodcutter tools.

For landmarks, have a personal house around the size of a single plan small house. Give us 3-4 versions of it with different layouts of furnitures and design.
For current landmarks, give us versions. Instead of a bathhouse that seems to draw more from SHB dwarf style, let me have one in a Sharlyan or Lominsan style.

This could make for more varied islands while still using the current system.

[Cabalabob]

This definitely feels like more content that’s just going to be released then ignored and left to die, like chocobo companions, squadrons, diadem, FC airships/subs. It’ll probably last me about 2 months to slow farm cowries for all the minions etc. then my animals will be left to starve, my crops will die and the mammets will all rust.

I had a suspicion that since we could raise animals this would have some connection to beastmaster when it released which would probably have given it something to keep it alive for the foreseeable future. But the animal raising is so shallow and the big nail in that coffin was that to unlock island sanctuary you need to get to an endwalker area (something they wouldn’t require for job related content).

[Deo14]

While I agree, in theory. This is far from the first time SE has released content is what essentially amounts to a beta version only to subsequently leave it to rot when the long delay in updates causes players to lose interest. So people have a reason to be skeptical on how quickly Island Sanctuary will get updated.

Really hope that this was more of a test whether players will like it or not, because it seems like there really isn't anything to do once you get rank 10 and catch best animals. If you bought everything, you can't do much more with cowries other than exchange them for dyes/materia at terrible rate. So you just spend it on automatic pasture and cropland and visit island for 10 minutes once a week. Only active part of gameplay at that point is gathering over and over again, but there isn't even incentive to do that, because you need to gather 291/582 nodes for single IX/X materia, which are currently worth 10-15k at most. Unless they make more involved activities that have some replay value, this content will start to rot just like Doman Enclave.

[ReynTime]

Their idea of a "Sanctuary" is a factory. The WoL surely must see managing a large scale production and export of goods as vacation time!
Then again the team also considers going into (6.1 and 6.2 MSQ spoilers)

a shard consumed by the void and saving it

as the same as "going back to being just an adventurer". Go figure.