I love the new installment of Moonlight Island, but boy do I have some major critiques about it.
Moonlight Island, (MI as I often call it) is basically a new version of homesteads but it allows you to terraform. You can decorate to your heart's content; you even have Islanders that can craft items for you. Though on the downside, the only way to level up your island is to have your Islanders craft stuff. It's definitely a grind for sure. But you can surely make some pretty islands!
Let's get onto how costly things can be though.. Say you want to expand your island? There will be required materials you need to expand it, yeah ok, cool, no big deal. That's until you realize that the materials you need can only be crafted by the islanders. Ok, yeah that's fine. Wait-Wha? Unlock the special recipe to make said items? Ok, yeah, I can do that. Oh.. It costs.. 5 Island points to unlock that recipe. How do I get 5 points..? Oh the points are from your island level. Fine, fine I'll do it but I'll have to save all my points for it.
Yay you reached level 5! Let's make that mat! Perfect done, what else do I need? Oh what's that... Oh it needs to be crafted by islanders too! Where is- Unlock secret recipe... Costs 5 points to unloc- So I need level 10 to make them.
^I think you get the picture.
Alright I understand why it's like this, that's alright. This obviously isn't something you are meant to rush through which is totally understandable. I'll take my time.
Let us talk now about Terraforming.
This is so exciting! We can create a beautiful landscape to our own design! It's an amazing thing! That's until you realize the cost.
1 landscape essence per one unit changed. So, you go ahead and craft a lot of them because this island is in fact, huge!
You get along your way, start building-OOPS! You made a mistake! Undo it! Wait... I can only undo it once. So, you take the gut punch and fix your mistake which absolutely will cost you more Landscape Essence than it did to even make this little ledge. Next you decide to place your decorative items on it-
"Landscape is uneven".. You check through it, it's all the same level and it fits the unit size. Boy that costed a lot of essence. But now you know it's even!
"Landscape is uneven..." Well ok, let's just undo the whole thing and make it all flat. Guess what? That's going to cost double the essence to get back to where you started.
There really needs to be a better system for if you make a mistake instead of just, "Undo Once". It's way too costly on essence and can really scare of anyone from terraforming. In my personal opinion, it really makes the addition of terraforming a headache instead of something fun and exciting to do.
Things I think need to be added to the Moonlight Island.
- Flatten Button where it sets the level of everything to 0 with little to no cost of essence.
- Undo button that undoes however many changes you just made.
How can you expect players to build if they can't make mistakes?
- Homestead items really need to have smaller unit sizes for bigger objects.
There are so many bigger items that have huge placement boxes. Newer trees like the Cotton Candy trees have 1x1 unit size which is AMAZING. But the old trees have 3x3 unit size. Doesn't really make sense does it..?
- Homestead items really need to be water-sand elevation friendly.
Has anyone else tried to place the Homestead Deck Cafe (A/B) on their beach? I know I have. I kept running into the whole "Landscape is uneven" despite me making sure that it's all one level. I even raised the water to the sand level and vice versa. How can you give me a boat and not let me put it in the water?!?!
- Change the terrain!
We know how the homesteads allowed you to have Connus and Vales locations. Basically, you could have a desert or snowy homestead. It would be really cool to see Moonlight Islands that have different weather/terrain. Especially since we have items like the Hot Spring Pavilion!
- Add more basic items to the Construction List.
I was happy to see a lot of the options added to the Construction List like the cherry blossom trees. But they don't even have single Maple trees.. There's one but it has a chair to it.. That's kinda.. yeah... We also just need better trees with better unit sizes and variety.
- Homestead Housing.
A lot of the homestead houses had a lot of cool skins (Construction Kits) that we could put in our homesteads. But now we can only have the buildable houses and some of the decorative houses. I think it'd be a good addition to have those as placeable skins in our MI's.
Honestly this is all I could really think of off the top of my head.
I've been tinkering with Moonlight Island since it came out and I love it, but boy does it need some work and to be more user friendly. I also understand with Mabinogi Eternity in the works, a lot of this stuff may be fixed or added to.
But what do you guys think? What changes would you like to see and what are some difficulties you've bumped into?
(Also sorry if my typing is sloppy, I'm very tired and wanted to get this up ASAP.)
