So will Island Sanctuary become more like WoW Garrisons?

[Shurrikhan]

You do realize why Garrisons are considered a failure and heavily reduced player interactions?
Those commodities aren’t needed. I’d understand a repair NPC but the rest is asking to repeat mistakes made by another studio.

The lost player interactions being complained about were out in the world -- seeing people do their Apexus dailies, out gathering, etc., because it so devalued both through creating more lucrative mining options within the tenth-of-a-mile of one's garrison than across the whole damned continent, so long as one wasn't interested in continuing beyond the point of steeply diminished returns. And embedding an auction house into one's garrison came at a steep cost, since it meant losing out on some of those much larger conveniences (all to, what, make it so one could bounce back and forth b/t Garrison and a capital city without a single flight more often than every 15 minutes).

When's the last time in XIV you saw any amount of players just out grinding mob encampments, gathering herbs and ore, etc., for the world to seem lived in? And are islands somehow making you no longer need to go around the world for your daily time-locked collectables loop? Do they provide the benefit of FATEs?

If not, the only "lived world" or "player interactions" one would be losing is... crowding the Limsa Market Boards?

[Neoyoshi]

It's not even remotely the same thing.

I suffered through waaaay too much of Warlord's of Draenor to be confident in this statement; WoW Garrison's and Island Sanctuary are like night and day.

The only real similarities in both pieces of game content; is that both made a number of players incorrectly assume that it was player housing.

Blizzard kind of did that to themselves though; there's lots of early Garrison video panels of devs calling it " World of Warcraft's version of housing " which is not a statement you want to make to a room full of gamers who may have also played a decent amount of The Sims? xD

It's possible somewhere along the line the Live Letters may have given off the same level of statements to it's audience; i mean if people have played enough Japanese farming sims like Harvest Moon; it's possible the audience could have drawn those conclusions as well.

I'd say it's probably a not so significant comparison in the long run, since FFXIV already has full fledged housing; but it's a funny parallel.

Plus the memes were great.

[Shurrikhan]

The expansion and garrisons failed, because if garrisons were good, they’d be still worked on.

You're looking at a history of one-offs for the purpose of being expansion-specific selling points. And the tech for garrisons was continued and reiterated upon. It's what paved the way for Order Halls, another well-liked feature.

Now, why they have one-offs instead of keeping the story-cohesive and -imbedded features from a given expansion relevant into further ones, I do not know. Though I'll admit it does keep expansions feeling more fresh (Garrisons + Apexis, Artifact Weapons + Order Halls, Essences + Azerite + Expeditions, Torghast + Maw + Covenants, Dragonflights + Dragonflying + Primal Storms, etc.), it does seem a waste.

But again, not doing X again (and again) doesn't mean it was unpopular or that it failed. They just like a greater degree of novelty each expansion, so the expansion-specific features borrow from each other more in spirit, in findings, and in underlying tech than borrowing wholesale.

Though now gone, garrisons were quite popular; Artifact Weapons, Order Halls, late stage Essences, and Zerith Mortis were all likewise very popular... and are likewise now gone in themselves, their lessons and tech repurposed so that expansions should improve even while being far more open to varied experimentation.

[Tint]

You do realize why Garrisons are considered a failure and heavily reduced player interactions ?
Those commodities aren’t needed. I’d understand a repair NPC but the rest is asking to repeat mistakes made by another studio.

No, I have never played WoW.

For me the island is like housing. Just without a house. Housing already reduces player interaction. And that's exactly what I want. I can't stand large groups of people, Limsa is the worst. So I want a personal space for myself where I can hang out, wait while I queue into content, can play crafting jobs and so on.

But the island is lacking basic features for that. Especially the retainer bell and repair NPC. I have to leave my island everytime I want to do anything else than standing around and repair my gear after a few dungeon runs. I don't have to leave my house (or apartment) do access my retainers or repair my gear. Market board is right around the corner as well.

When they can't give us actual housing on the island then at least they could add the features a house would offer. Mainly offering a place for introverts to hang out.

And what player interaction would be reduced? I don't interact with anyone outside my FC for years now. Queue into content, buy stuff off the market board, even joining a PF does not require any interaction at all. Maybe shouting "LFG" into the chat when a hunt mob spawned?

[ValkyrieL]

Not sure if allow to post link.
https://youtu.be/FDs_4WH5ocE?t=6569
Time stamp: 1:49:30

to sum it, it was widely consider one of the worse thing in the game, it alienate the player base to an instance, no player interaction, basically playing a solo game experience and game will be feel completely dead as everyone is in there own bubble. say goodbye to all players AFK in Limsa, all cities
so ya hopefully it NEVER becomes a 1 stop shop for everything, Marketboard/Retainer,shops etc.

[Shurrikhan]

Not sure if allow to post link.
https://youtu.be/FDs_4WH5ocE?t=6569
Time stamp: 1:49:30

to sum it, it was widely consider one of the worse thing in the game, it alienate the player base to an instance, no player interaction, basically playing a solo game experience and game will be feel completely dead as everyone is in there own bubble. say goodbye to all players AFK in Limsa, all cities
so ya hopefully it NEVER becomes a 1 stop shop for everything, Marketboard/Retainer,shops etc.

Players were no more "isolated" in WoD than anywhere outside of Timeless Isles and around the rep grind NPCs in prior expansions. That was still more "isolated" than they otherwise would have been if not for garrisons, but WoD also provided novel systems that pushed players out into the world in near-equal measure. People also went out into the world to, among other things, improve their garrisons.

Know what else does that? Housing.

a 1 stop shop for everything, Marketboard/Retainer,shops etc.

You had finite building slots. It literally could not support everything. You could have A, B, or C, but what remains left you dependent on others, just as before. It was the equivalent of having one more crafter alt to whom to send mats to make shit for your main, the engineering AH toy and bonus turn-ins/trades, or actually leveling up your direct rewards.

The components that would "isolate" you came at opportunity cost. They were not free. You'd have to give up structures that'd better aid rewards, experience, follower progression, etc., to have them.

Tl;dr: You're assigning cause to something otherwise held as a net, if less polished than desireable, good just because it happens to be one of the few things that expansion even had. WoD sucked because it was literally starved for/of content, not "because garrisons!!"

______

No, "a guy wrote a (purposely one-sided, often rambling) 2-hour video on it, so everything he said must be true and must include the context needed for an honest analysis" is not a decent stand-in for having actually interacted with something yourself.

[Jojoya]

Not sure if allow to post link.
https://youtu.be/FDs_4WH5ocE?t=6569
Time stamp: 1:49:30

to sum it, it was widely consider one of the worse thing in the game, it alienate the player base to an instance, no player interaction, basically playing a solo game experience and game will be feel completely dead as everyone is in there own bubble. say goodbye to all players AFK in Limsa, all cities
so ya hopefully it NEVER becomes a 1 stop shop for everything, Marketboard/Retainer,shops etc.

If players were truly wanting to be isolated from other players, they would already be doing that in the housing wards that already have all those things (or the ability to place them within a house/apartment) except a glamour dresser.

People hang out around the Aetherytes in Limsa and Gridania because they want to, not because those items are nearby.

Everyone who hates on Garrisons for how WoD turned out continues to ignore why everyone was sitting in their Garrisons - the lack of open world content to be done. By the time Blizzard got around to addressing that lack in 6.2, the damage was already done.

[True-to-Caesar]

Garrisons had :

- repair npc
- transmog npc
- bank npc
- auction house
- mobile mini-game where you send npcs on missions and back then it used to rewards a TON of money
- Daily gathering even if you are not a miner/herbalist, fishing pond too with unique rewards
- bonus items from crafting npcs (alchemist, blacksmith stations etc.), speed potion still handy to this day.

The fact a few people here, with clear illusion that it didn’t severely reduced player interactions and wasn’t another mark in the lobby game trend wow fell into, is impressive.

As if the thousands of threads on reddit and forums didn’t complain about this, as if they didn’t kept garrisons because of these issues. I myself left back then because of that and piss poor content, aka few to no reason to go outside so it enhanced the lobby aspect of just being in your garrison, queueing dungeons etc. And be back to send your npcs on mission etc. They kinda fixed that with the Hellfire citadel patch where it sent you there to do activities.

So again when people like below, go to far levels of reach to say Housing or even Island Sanctuary are the same, I can’t help but think they never really played the game back in WoD and not after when 80% of it was made irrelevant. Or it’s copium idk, very weird mental gymnastics to find arguments for something that is wildly a known fact. That’s why they didn’t go with a similar system in Legion, and just kept the mobile timegated mini-game. Blizzard does reuse stuff when it works, just not this time.

Players were no more "isolated" in WoD than anywhere outside of Timeless Isles and around the rep grind NPCs in prior expansions. That was still more "isolated" than they otherwise would have been if not for garrisons, but WoD also provided novel systems that pushed players out into the world in near-equal measure. People also went out into the world to, among other things, improve their garrisons.

Know what else does that? Housing.

[Shurrikhan]

Blizzard does reuse stuff when it works, just not this time.

• Challenge Modes? A success. Gone now.
• Legendary Cloak Questline? Huge success. Gone now.
• Timeless Isles? Highly successful. Gone now.
• Artifact Weapons? Hugely successful. Gone now.
• Brawler Guild? Highly successful. Gone now.
• Mage Tower? One of the most-praised additions to the game. Re-released only once, for a brief time. Gone now.
• Order Halls? Still one of the most reminisced-upon features of the game. Gone now.
• Island Expeditions? Successful in themselves (though over-grinded at the time). Gone now.
• Additional zones having additional purely "fun"-centric gimmicks and systems? Well received. Gone now.

Each of those either evolved (into something only abstractly sequential to them) or were dropped not because they were bad, but simply because they were meant to make their expansion stand apart. That's why some of the best post-level-cap zones' features aren't repeated, even while post-level-cap zones, more generally, continue with further expansions. WoW prefers their expansions not to feel so similar to one another.

The fact a few people here, with clear illusion that it didn’t severely reduced player interactions and wasn’t another mark in the lobby game trend wow fell into, is impressive.

A quip introducing pots and kettles might be appropriate, if we didn't so often feel the even more lobby-based.


And you're still missing the point -- what actually changes as a result of the given addition.

Let's say I give every player the means to generate a (further) fixed amount extra goods or equivalent currency from the comfort of their home, on a daily/weekly timer. Does that suddenly kill the overworld, regardless of their relative tuning?

Or, let's say we no longer have to visit an inn to adjust our glamour plates. Does that then kill significantly impact human "interaction" in cities for the lack of people teleporting to the main aether, to the aethernet node nearest the inn, walking for 8 seconds, and disappearing from sight again?

That's essentially what you're arguing here. That if you're allowed to summon an aesthetician from your island, cities will turn into ghost towns, or that if you're allowed any bit more currency-value without leaving one's island, even if that opportunity to do a limited amount of extraction there rather than elsewhere were under daily caps, that the overworld would be significantly impacted.

But when would those things have amounted to interaction anyways?

If you want to make the case that we should be better able to visit others' islands, or cooperatively build them up, I'm all there for that since it'd actually have an element of available intended and/or rewarding interaction, but simply having people path through each other due to some arbitrary restriction (can't craft a glamour dresser, the only way to see a hairdresser is to call them into your room, etc.), or translucent individuals literally immune to any consequence of your actions and uninterested in anything you might be doing flying down, shrugging once or twice, swinging a pick 6 times, and flying off again, is not interaction. None of what you consider at risk here is something worth protecting.

Look instead to what can actually be done to make the open world interesting, rather than holding anything else hostage to its lack of intrinsic value or broadly felt rewards. If you have to hold back improvements elsewhere just to keep something barebone from looking worse, you'd be better served fixing what's already looking dull/aged.

[Jojoya]

Garrisons had :

- repair npc
- transmog npc
- bank npc
- auction house
- mobile mini-game where you send npcs on missions and back then it used to rewards a TON of money
- Daily gathering even if you are not a miner/herbalist, fishing pond too with unique rewards
- bonus items from crafting npcs (alchemist, blacksmith stations etc.), speed potion still handy to this day.

The fact a few people here, with clear illusion that it didn’t severely reduced player interactions and wasn’t another mark in the lobby game trend wow fell into, is impressive.

As if the thousands of threads on reddit and forums didn’t complain about this, as if they didn’t kept garrisons because of these issues. I myself left back then because of that and piss poor content, aka few to no reason to go outside so it enhanced the lobby aspect of just being in your garrison, queueing dungeons etc. And be back to send your npcs on mission etc. They kinda fixed that with the Hellfire citadel patch where it sent you there to do activities.

So again when people like below, go to far levels of reach to say Housing or even Island Sanctuary are the same, I can’t help but think they never really played the game back in WoD and not after when 80% of it was made irrelevant. Or it’s copium idk, very weird mental gymnastics to find arguments for something that is wildly a known fact. That’s why they didn’t go with a similar system in Legion, and just kept the mobile timegated mini-game. Blizzard does reuse stuff when it works, just not this time.

Removing the listed QoL features from the Garrisons wouldn't have changed anything. Those weren't what was keeping players there. I didn't have most of them in my garrison so it was a 5 minute trip to Ashran to do what I need to do at the AH, check my bank, get my repairs done then back to my Garrison.

You want to know what kept players in their Garrison (other than the lack of non-dungeon/raid content)?

Garrison chat.