Why is Square Giving Up On Island Sanctuary? 

I think it was just a complet failure thematically. If I think of an Island Sanctuary, I do not think of Mammet Sweetshops, Spreadsheets, blast mining and logging whole parts of the island to fill Tatarus coffers.

7.0 Patch Notes : - Housing Districts have been reclaimed by the City States. They need the space because surviving the Final Days motivated everyone to up the Birth Rates to a ridiculous degree so everyone wants a House for their new Families - Island Sanctuary is now Housing. Hope you're happy. Honestly, while I wish they would rework parts of it, I'd rather see their Resources go somewhere else with better odds of success. While I personally liked Island Sanctuary, its biggest draw were the Glamours, Mounts and relaxed access to Gathering Materia (it is so annoying to get with Scrips imo) = /

It makes sense as to why they can't really continue to keep Island Sanctuary going through the future. Part of it could be to free up the team to work on other projects, but I feel it's more so to not have to rework Island Sanctuary's currency and reward system for future proofing. Cause as it is it isn't future proofed and would cause a lot of problems in Dawntrail if they just added rewards that are for Dawntrail. For example; when IS was first released it was a way to be able to passively get current expansion DoL and DoH materia. They could already be farmed for before where the cap was time but the IS cap is just set by the server each week. It gave people who can't sit around to gain hordes of DoL and DoH materia by sitting on the game all day an out to the criminal level pricing of these materia. Battle jobs had dungeon drops, the hunt, and spiritbond to get materia. Crafter/Gatherers just had scrip farming, of which crafters had a dependency on gathering but not the other way, and spiritbond. If IS was given a currency, or the rewards lists were updated, for Dawntrail then it gives an insane advantage to those who got in early enough to stockpile mountains of materials and currency to start the next expansion where everyone else was effectively reset. And even then it doesn't really fully fix the problem because you can horde current level materia to transmute into Dawntrail materia later but it is significantly less egregious and prone to RNG. So it was probably for the best to say, "we aren't going to expand this anymore, you will get something else in the next expansion".

Island Sanctuary was like THE thing I was hyped for when it was first revealed, I dove into it the moment the patch it came with dropped and didn't even glance at the other offerings. Only to run smack into a brick wall called "progress gated content" where the progress was "how much are you willing to grind manual nodes". I beat the entire sanctuary stuff out of sheer spite but haven't touched it since. I go back every so often but can't bring myself to do anything. I really do think it needs a complete overhaul, like go back to absolute fundamentals level of overhaul. It needs automation of resource production for a start because the meagre amounts you get from the current automation just isn't doing it. It needs workshop presets for those who just want to use the same things and then after both those it needs some kind of revamp of it's core premise. We have a wonderful island sanctuary and naught but mammets to share it with? How about going animal crossing style with villagers who fill roles or something? I dunno, all I know is Island Sanctuary is currently dead content for a lot of people. The only main draw is easy materia farming and it's not even worth it to do for people who mainly want to sell it since so many people are doing that that the prices just tanked to shit from what they once were. I really was hoping it'd be far more than what it became, it was such a cool concept and theme but the ball wasn't even dropped because I doubt the ball was in their hands to begin with.

Do you know where/when the developers said this? can't find any other coverage on it. got a link? cheers!

Ey i love that big dumb gator

the thing i hated about IS was that when you gather stuff you only get one resource but when regular gathering you're able to obtain more than one. This made it feel horrible to gather stuff so I just relied on the missions that gathered for you which slowed down my progress a lot but i dont really care. I just cant be asked to gather so slowly.

WAIT WAIT WAIT, I will need a max lvl crafter with gear etc to progress my island at some point? WTF O__O

The biggest failure of Island Sanctuary was that the roadblocks they put in place literally only hurt casual players. As you mention around 2:00, hardcore players found a way around the time limits. Where as if you're a casual player who can only log in once every 1 or two weeks, you're taking forever to do IS. If they had it be like... there was a rolling cap for how much exp you could gain then they could pace people without punishing folks that aren't logging in every day.

What mount is that with Alpha? oO

I would of loved to have seem areas dedicated to housing, tree's, etc and branching paths to more areas stating from the beach. Other ideas after watching your video could of been a FC island Sanctuary hosting 10 members or more and the option to chose not to have a Island but use the FC island instead.

1 second into this video and im already rubbing my temples. I enjoy your videos because I can listen to the opposite side and talk on the other side. What was wrong with Island Sanctuary. - The mundane tasks and not a "vacation" that seemed to be the promised part of all of this, instead were giving some people we... mostly dont care about a vacation instead of ourselves. - Quests that tell you nothing of how to properly progress in them as the "tutorial" few steps you just "did it" and remembered nothing. - Gathering 1 item at a time? Theres a REASON Gathering in the overworld has skills that you can gather 2-100+ of specific items in one swing. Etc. - Workshop simulator, go once a week and leave making this dev work a COMPLETE waste of time, resources, and money. People would have rathered a GOOD piece of content that they paid for with their hard earned money to the dev team. - The only good part of Island Sanctuary being a place you can "go to" to "escape" people only to find out that... theres a friends system but they can do nothing in your island with you making it a pointless experience so you leave... (Apart from chair sitting and talking when you can just do that in: An Apartment, House, Limsa, anywhere else.) - Not having flying from the get go, so the tasks are even worse then mundane. - The resources not being CLUMPS and together in a good way that you can farm 1 SINGLE resources the entire time when you need 150 of them for the weekly quota('s). - Poor map design and terrain for actually gathering resources the single thing you "need" to do a LOT of. - No fucking summoning bell. Island Sanctuary was one of the worst pieces of content made in the game outside Release Date Diadem in the Firmament. I'm personally glad its gone and dead hopefully wont be looked at again. EDIT: Seems you did go with a lot of these points mentioned happy to hear it c: however I would like to give feedback that the beginning of this video sounded like you were COMPLETELY FOR Island, and you had no idea WHY it was going away... That and the tone of your voice is 100% downer in the beginning, along with the thumbnail and title. When it should have been "Why did players not like island sanctuary" or something instead felt like a false narrative in this one.

Hopefully they fo thr usual and improve on what they've learned from the island

I just feel that there is simply not enough things to do on the Sanctuary right now past basic leveling. And the fact that it has 0 bearing on the base game gameplay. And it is not an execution error but a conscious design decision, which makes it even worse - because this means that what is there is fundamentally flawed. IMO any source of content in FFXIV should be somehow intertwined with the core gameplay - meaning that whatever you do in side content, you will gain benefits from it as your main job - crafters can craft consumables and gear, can repair gear, build housing stuff, glams, etc.There is very minor influence - you can straight up buy some materia for crafters and gatherers but that's the extent of involvement of core gameplay in the Sanctuary. As you said - adding ability for Crafters and Gatherers to level in it and/or build items that would increase speed of building, or buildings would bring benefit to crafting jobs - all of that would increase the interest from players. Furthermore - that would open alternative options for progress. I feel like there is definitely a flaw in high-level gameplay in FFXIV and there is just not enough mid-level things to do, as Xeno said on multiple occasions. There has to be good middle layer between casual players and hardcore players and FF kinda has it but it feels very weak and disjointed rn. You either casual and go to night clubs, play music as bard and afk in Limsa or you're a hardcore player, then you're going through Savages, going through Ultimates and afk in Limsa. In short, there has to be something in between of these two things. Island Sanctuary had potential to be that something, but its design was flawed at the inception so it never reached said potential.

I found IS enjoyable for a few weeks to get the glam. Sadly, its pretty low quality content. I dont think cancelling it was the play, but imo solo/casual players deserve something better than IS. For last 2 pathes i used IS to afk in since aside from hording cowries there is nothing to do if you already caught rares you want.

I wish Island Sanctuary ended up differently. Spreadsheets are boring, it’s a major downgrade from normal gathering and feels like a waste of time while also not being involved enough to be engaging. I wish it was more like an updated Diadem - spending a lot of time there, a large part of enjoying that process was because of zone chat. It just feels too isolated and lonely in Island Sanctuary. I’m glad they aren’t continuing it but also sad that what could have been a good thing ended up sucking.

Throw in the kaijus and make it a tower defender,

Island Sanctuary was a half-assed attempt at appeasing the 'cozy' gamers Square thought would be easy revenue for low effort. What a joke.

SQEX will give up on islands because SQEX gives up on EVERYTHING. They never refine something in the next expansion.. they leave it dead in the water and walk away to the next thing that will totally be better; despite never really taking things away from the old system.

Square isn't giving up on island sanctuary, it's just over lol. They didn't give up on bozja or eureka. It'd be needlessly restrictive to tether themselves to island sanctuaries permanently. If you care that much they're doing more "lifestyle content" in dawntrail that'll probably be just as boring

Lol why do you play as Ardbert?

Island Sanctuary is super tedious and the complete soul less crap that Stardew Valley was designed to be an answer to the modern life and modern gaming becoming way too grindy. Typical AAA corpo slop that doesnt understand anything but the most surface level design choices. Thank god for mods being cheat codes as I would never be able to get any of the cosmetics. The next thing they gottta killa re boring RNG dungeons I hate those as much as IS. Endwalker was such a colossal failure on so many levels and systems.

Because it's bad. Next.

Island Sanctuary looks like boring azz solo player content for anti-social rejects