Feedback and Suggestions to Improve the Island Sanctuary

[Symphonyx]

I just wanted to give some suggestions that I had on changes / improvements that could be made to the Island Sanctuary. If this is the wrong section to post this, please direct me on where to go. If the devs could address these outstanding issues, I think it would make the island experience better for everyone. I will just post the main points here, then go into further details for some of my suggestions in a following post:

(1) There needs to be some purpose in having the ability to travel to a friend's island.

(2) It should take less time for crops to grow.

As I understand it, it currently takes approx. 2 days for crops on your island to grow. While I appreciate the simplicity in this structure, I feel like it takes a tad too long for crops to grow. If you have a full pasture of animals, feed them all premium feed on a daily basis, and set items to craft in your workshop that also requires those crops, it quickly becomes a struggle to keep up the amount of crops you need to sustain activity on your island. I think shortening the time it takes crops to grow to 1 day instead of 2 days, would be better overall.

(3) The animal pasture should be big enough to be able to have one of each type of animal that you can catch on the island.

Currently, at level 10, you can only have 20 animals in your pasture. As far as I have seen, there are a total of 29 different types of animals available to catch on the island. I think it would be good to allow players the ability to have one of every type of animal on the island, so increase the limit of the animal pasture to 30 instead of 20.

(4) There needs to be more filter settings options for the supply and demand menu in the workshops.

(5) Small Quality of Life issues

(a) When you hover your mouse over the mood symbols in the Pasture Management menu, it should tell you what the symbol means for each animal. I have seen way too often, people asking what a lightning bolt or a cloud means, and a simple word when you hover over it with your mouse would fix that issue of people not understanding what the symbols mean.

(b) The minions are kinda too small. Maybe make them a little bigger. It'd also be pretty nice if certain minions could interact with each other on the island (like how the bridesmoogles circle around each other if in close proximity). Even better if they could interact with the mammets (at least, the ones that you can't interact with).

(c) Since the tree fort, bathhouse, windmill, and lighthouse seem to serve no other purpose than decoration, allow the minions to explore those decorations. Let them soak in the hot tub, or be in the tree house, etc.

(6) Once you have gotten your island to level to and have everything you want from the merchants, what purpose does the island serve?

[Symphonyx]

(1)(a) Yes we have the ability to visit the islands of players in our friends list, but there is nothing that you can do in your friend's island that gives me a reason to go there. I can't help them gather resources (and I assume that they wouldn't add that feature because they want you to use the granaries). I can't help them construct buildings faster. I can't help them harvest crops or collect leavings from animals (I assume because they want you to pay the mammets to do that). Why would I go to a friend's island? What is there to do over there that would justify or make me want to go there? Give some purpose to visiting your friend's islands. Allow us to do things other than just exist or take photos on a friend's island. Have some achievements for helping out on a friend's island... just... do something to make that feature worth exploring.

(4)(a) Currently, there are 5 categories (category, popularity, supply, demand shift, and predicted demand), and you can select one of the current options per category tab. However, the option that you select shows you that and ONLY that. I think that the supply and demand menu would be much better if you the filter options had the option to show more results. I'm not doing the best of explaining what I'm talking about, so I'll provide some examples:

(i) for the "Popularity" filter, instead of showing only items with "average" popularity, have a checkbox that you can select that would display all of the items with an 'average' popularity or higher. If I want to see all items with an average popularity and higher, there should be a filter option to view all of those items together instead of being limited to only one type at a time.

(ii) for the "Demand Shift" filter, instead of showing only the items with a "none" demand shift, have some kind of option to select that would display all of the items with a 'none' demand or lower. Give me the ability to see all items with a 'none,' 'decreasing,' and 'plummeting' demand together in one search instead of only showing the items in that one specific category at a time.

[Symphonyx]

(6)(a) I worry that once people have everything they want from the island shops, the islands will quickly be abandoned, as they will lose purpose in the eyes of many players. I think that having some kind of major server / data-center wide event, would be great in getting players that are hesitant about the island to give it a try, as well as getting players who are growing bored with it new reason to come back to it.

It could be something to the effect of having a server / data-center wide goals of donating a certain amount of materials and crops, and donating a certain amount of crafted items (you could have a drop box on the island where players could specifically contribute items for the event, and have a tab option in the workshop where you could designate certain crafts to be made specifically for the event).

There could be player rewards that you'd obtain based on how much you contributed to the server/data center's progression, and then bigger server/data center rewards based on how much all the players have contributed to the overall goal. The rewards could vary from gil, glam, minions, mounts, Khloe's gold certificate, and maybe even a character fantasia, that would be given out to every player who participated enough in the event (if the player and the server/data center reached the production goals).

Now I know that some people will probably comment with something in relation to the Ishgard restoration, but there are many players (like myself) who weren't aware of, or weren't even playing this game when the Ishgard restoration event was taking place, and have never experienced an event like that. Additionally, to my limited understanding of that event, it was a thing specifically for crafters and gatherers, which would've turned away those people (who are not interested in the crafting/gathering parts of the game) from participating in the event. This would be different because it wouldn't require you to be any particular DoM/DoW/DoH/DoL job, all you would need is access to the island. There's no fighting mobs, no utilizing of any crafter/gather jobs, you're just doing what most people are already doing on their islands, but designating a portion of their resource intake to the event progress.

Either way, I think it would be a great idea to have a server or data center-wide event, and hope that the devs at least give it some consideration.