Island Sanctuary is a big letdown

[Arkdra]

I don't like Island Sanctuary. The specific situation that brought this on (spoilers for things you unlock) is that there's a new granary gathering path you can unlock for the caves. So obviously, now I need to send out the robits to gather there for the next while to build up stockpiles of those ingredients, mainly the shrimp. Well that means that all my other resources are going to languish and get used up while I am doing that and this means I have to spend more time gathering resources.

Which is fuckin awful. I cannot stress enough how much I dislike the gathering in Island Sanctuary. It is so much worse than regular gathering and it's not like that is exactly riveting gameplay. Like this was sold as non-sweaty casual content but I've had to spend more time the last couple of days shoring up low resources than I did gathering all the mats for a 640 set.

The workshop being a glorified spreadsheet aint great either, but it's livable thanks to the discord that posts what to do. Just wish the UI for that wasn't so wretched.

Also wildly disappointed at the "npcs will visit your island" just meaning they show up for a singular quest at the end. Like, I had low expectations for this already. Lots of people expected Animal Crossing, I expected that maybe some times random npcs might show up on the island and have incidental dialogue like holiday events, but can't even get that.

Lastly, farm automation specifically is lackluster.

Fixes

1. You can keep this alternate gathering thing in so the content remains doable by people who beat the MSQ and don't have doh levelled but please let us just use our damn doh jobs in here so I can get my gathering done in minutes instead of an hour or 2.
2. You should probably come up with something better to do besides the workshop but that's a nebulous claim and in the interim, the workshop ui needs a search bar so I can just type things in it to find them instead of having to remember the categories or craft times of dozens of bland items. You also need to fix the algorithm that decides on what items are best value to be things that require a wider variety of goods than what it is currently doing. I got hundreds of assorted underwater ingredients that go unused while it seems like I have to make special effort to get Laver every couple weeks.
3. Let me just automate my farms to use whatever seeds I have the most of at the time.
4. Buff up the granary returns. Most of the time this content is just grey chores I get through in a day but every time I am prompted to get out and dig stuff up, that's when the discontent shows up.

Sadly, none of this would make it cool and fun honestly, but it would at least make it not obnoxious and that would be good enough.

[Themarvin]

I think it is fine, but content does not neccessarily be that it caters for all, no MMO in history has been able to do that.

[Jojoya]

If you're not enjoying it, then don't do it. There are plenty of players who are enjoying it and none of your suggestions would make it more enjoyable for those who don't by your own admission.

Seems like most of those who are enjoying it aren't tying themselves to a spreadsheet or letting the mammets handle the pasture/cropland. Efficiency is not always an ally when it comes to having fun. Going for efficiency means creating an underlying pressure to always get more/do better and that sort of stress cancels out fun very quickly.

[Arkdra]

If you're not enjoying it, then don't do it. There are plenty of players who are enjoying it and none of your suggestions would make it more enjoyable for those who don't by your own admission.

Seems like most of those who are enjoying it aren't tying themselves to a spreadsheet or letting the mammets handle the pasture/cropland. Efficiency is not always an ally when it comes to having fun. Going for efficiency means creating an underlying pressure to always get more/do better and that sort of stress cancels out fun very quickly.

I probably will stop doing it after I hit r16 tbh.

[CidHeiral]

I despise Island Sanctuary but it's not a big deal to just go in there once a week to put random junk on the workshop and send out the gathering bots. You can get whatever rewards you want while barely interacting with the content.

[Katz_McKatz]

....

Fixes

1. You can keep this alternate gathering thing in so the content remains doable by people who beat the MSQ and don't have doh levelled but please let us just use our damn doh jobs in here so I can get my gathering done in minutes instead of an hour or 2.
2. You should probably come up with something better to do besides the workshop but that's a nebulous claim and in the interim, the workshop ui needs a search bar so I can just type things in it to find them instead of having to remember the categories or craft times of dozens of bland items. You also need to fix the algorithm that decides on what items are best value to be things that require a wider variety of goods than what it is currently doing. I got hundreds of assorted underwater ingredients that go unused while it seems like I have to make special effort to get Laver every couple weeks.
3. Let me just automate my farms to use whatever seeds I have the most of at the time.
4. Buff up the granary returns. Most of the time this content is just grey chores I get through in a day but every time I am prompted to get out and dig stuff up, that's when the discontent shows up.

Sadly, none of this would make it cool and fun honestly, but it would at least make it not obnoxious and that would be good enough.

I agree with your suggestions. I too have items that are never ever used in the workshop and have to export them while others constantly must be gathered. Laver is one of those. Before 6.4 it was mostly lots of laver and a few other items occasionally in small amounts. I've come to hate laver.

In addition to buffing the output of the granary returns, I wish they would up the amounts from regular gathering there. 1 useful item and the remainder per node of never used items is annoying. Nodes should have more than one of each item. It can vary with how many items but 1 per node is really frustrating.

Other than that, I don't worry about it. I mostly have things automated and set things up on workshop every Friday for the next week.

I didn't bother to catch the rare animals. I just have 2 or three rare ones that I happened upon while gathering. I wish they would put in a park or something where I could just put all the rare animals on display and have the farm for materials be separate. If they did that, I would enjoy catching the rare ones but I don't want to have to decide on which ones to have and which to not have.

[dspguy]

I just hit R15 today. I did minimal gathering outside of what was needed to upgrade the cabin, workshops, granaries, etc. I think I bridged the gap of experience that I needed by crafting stuff (Nets, sweetfeed, etc) just so I wouldn't have to gather much else.

My time investment in the island is pretty small. I expect the rewards to be pretty small, but in reality... there has been a lot of mounts and glam, etc. Honestly, the reward vs investment has been good. And I'm happy to rely on that discord to tell me what to do

[NovaBismarck]

I would like to add something as well. Overall, I've done Island Sanctuary daily since it came out. The rewards are nice, the island aesthetic is nice, minion and customization was a smart play, latest quest was fun, and the animal additions have been cute. There are some strong positives already there.

The grinding aspects have not been fun overall. I want to set the ocean ablaze so I never have to look at laver again. The UI there still feels clunky. It may be difficult to work around because of coding issues, not sure, but I do agree increasing granary awards may alleviate that.
(The people responsible for keeping up the overseas casual discord, ty so much, there is no way I would do all that workshop stuff without it).

An odd point of note. I may be the only Dum Dum that does this, but I have at least on 5 or 6 occasions put my workshop agenda into the wrong season. I am somewhat dyslexia, I try to carefully check the numbers and seasons, since I know I'm prone to getting things backwards, but I still mess it up. I kind of wish next season was a toggle or something to make it harder to put the wrong thing in.

[VictorSpoils]

It's going to be an outdoor furnishing dump for anyone not getting a house.

[Jojoya]

It's going to be an outdoor furnishing dump for anyone not getting a house.

It won't because it doesn't store furnishings. It only uses furnishing glamours while the actual item remains in inventory.