Why did Marvelous abandon the Trio of Towns formula?>multiple towns with different aesthetics and strong identities>food effects encourage cooking variety>crops have 4 different qualities, plus giant and golden crops>animals have 4 qualities as well>festivals below the highest difficulty only judge a selection of qualities, necessitating different fertilisers/treats than your default>father has a rad nickname in the festivals that aged wonderfullyIt's hard to play other farming sims after that. Throwing fertiliser at crops and getting a "chance" that they'll get a star next to their name. But only that one time, next sowing season you start from 0 again, whether you make seeds from good crops or not. Gay ass waifus. Half-baked combat thrown into every game. Why not make farming good and cut the rest? Trio of Towns will have its 10th anniversary next year and in my mind it hasn't been surpassed since.You know the staples. What would you change to improve the genre?
>>2241362>What would you change to improve the genre?Why would I care about it, if I already have games I like, with features I like, the way I like them?I'm not a game dev, so I don't have to come up with ideas how to sell my game. I already have my perfect set of games as a player
The target demographic doesn't care for complexity in these types of games, so publishers don't either, and all indie developers are busy trying to copy Stardew Valley to innovate.
>>2241362>You know the staples. What would you change to improve the genre?"The genre" is unified only by the actual gameplay, but the end goal varies, as do the intermediate rewards.You could try to put all of the games together so everyone gets everything, but then you have to balance the game, and the game not being "infinite money after season 1" means the average comfyfag will complain.
>>2241362The only farming game I have played was Stardew Valley and it was surprisingly good. Maybe other games have done something different but it seems the genre is mostly about having a cozy feel-good atmosphere so you can enjoy expanding and customizing your farm. As opposed to other /vst/ games where difficulty and/or complex gameplay is desirable in these games the most important thing would be making the visuals pleasing to look at and giving the player a sense of progress from blank slate to complete farm.
>>2245041Stardew would be great if the bachelors and bachelorettes paired off on their own to make the town feel truly alive. There are already clear obvious pairings for each too, but players would revolt if there was any kind of time limit beyond which their precious eternally pure waifu (well, besides Leah and Penny anyway) was no longer available to be romanced.
>>2245124It would be pretty dumb to put a time limit for when you have to romance a villager. It would go against the whole concept of the game where you can be as fast or slow as you want with everything.He could have added some new dialogue lines for the villagers after the player got married to indicate the leftover bachelors paired up. But that's such a minor thing that wouldn't have made a big difference. Instead he lets you divorve and choose a new partner if you want. I think that's a fine solution especially considering how small a part of the game romance is.
>>2241362Isn't this more of a /vrpg/? Though I can understand you posting here since that board is a shithole.
>>2245513You summed it up well. I figured I'd get away with it, since there are some light elements of business/management to these games.>>2243191I'm afraid that's it. A more complex game in the genre would likely be rejected by the comfy audience. Then again, it doesn't need to be much. 3oT wasn't exactly dorf fort, just packed a little more mechanically than other titles, and while it didn't review better for it, it didn't review worse either.
What always struck me as odd in this type of game was that the player always does the same jobs; it's always amateur farmer/rancher/miner/fisher/hobo/fly-swatter/tax-evader, so it would be a nice change of pace if we ran the town's general store, were the town doctor, patrolled the town as a policeman, or something different. I know there are games that have you doing these jobs, but they never come with a village of characters you can form "relationships" with, but the perspective from a different profession could yield unique characters with story lines that haven't been seen in the genre while mixing up the usual routines.
>>2248287It's true, farming kinds of dominates the "small village filled with people you can interact with" theme, I feel like a lot of the other management games focus on a larger scale, you're never a town doctor but a huge hospital. Recettear is the exception I can think of, great game. Maybe Graveyard Keeper as well? But I didn't like that one very much.
>>2249506Chef RPG has you running a restaurant in a coastal town, but it still has underdeveloped farming, fishing, combat (hunting), and foraging. The cooking aspect seems pretty under developed too. The Stardew Valley dev is also making a new game, but I doubt it will be that different.>Graveyard keeperThat game started off well, but a lot of the usual half-baked activities were added that detract from the medieval undertaker aspect, and the main character didn't really form any connections with the villagers, nor did they seem to care one way or the other about his profession.>RecettearA good game, but pretty light on the village aspect, and its mechanics are pretty simple too.
>>2245124two types of stardew niggas: ones who cry about not being able to get cucked by the other bachelors, and ones who install harem mods and then cuck every other bachelor
>>2250158You're forgetting the ones who install mods to turn all the bachelors into girls and then the harem mods.
>>2250314>turn all the bachelors into girlsthis is either the most based or gayest thing i've ever heard of
>>2251479>it's gay to be into girlsok
>>2245513>since that board is a shitholehow bad?
>>2254724I was checking the catalog there once by mistake instead of /vst/ and legitimately just thought I was on /v/. Tons of endless culture war ragebait threads with no actual game discussion
Played Stardew a few months ago and found it a great time. I fell in love with Haley at first sight and wish I had an IRL girlfriend like her.Funnily, achieving things in-game and making a great life for my farmer inspired me to go out, learn and achieve things in real life instead of sitting on my room playing games all day. Stardew will always hold a place in my heart for that.
>>2249545>Graveyard KeeperAt least that one is explained by the fact he just wants to go home. Everything else is just his way of getting the portal open unlike other games where you want to be connected to the others.
>>2254724The board is basically /v/.
>>2255111blessed trips for objectively best girl
>>2258444Checked, and I'm not saying he had to form a harem and abandon his goal, but playing errand boy to a bunch of terrible if amusing people is hardly like the relationships found in a Harvest Moon game.
>>2260718It has its charm in its own way. The Protagonist not giving a shit if he's baking human meat into burgers for a witch burning.
Why does there always have to be so much magic shit in these? Why can't it just be a farming+dating sim?
>>2274444I think it is fine if it leans more into folklore rather than dnd tropes. The sprites in the Harvest Moon games lent to the country atmosphere, like an old legend your grandparents would tell you, whereas random dungeons and dragons magic/animals/races are basically lazy writing and worldbuilding. What really annoys me is the shitty combat padding that infests most of these games nowadays.
>>2276145Whenever I feel like replaying Stardew Valley and its clones, tacked-on combat is the main reason I always drop it after a few hours.
>>2277294Stardew Valley is quite bad if I'm being honest, and the worst part is that because of its success a lot of the farming sims that followed it mindlessly copied its subpar mechanics.Harvest Moon doesn't have combat, and Rune Factory's combat ties into its in-depth crafting system and fits the game quite well. Those are the games that people should have been cloning.
>>2277321There's parts of Stardew that I quite enjoy. The music is repetitive but doesn't get annoying and it's quite moddable, which are big factors. I never quite got into Rune Factory because combat seemed even more mandatory there than in Stardew. The sub-genre absolutely would be in a better place if bokumono had become the template, I agree. Would be great if Marvelous put some effort into a good new main entry instead of shitting out PoOT and endless remakes.
>>2277328Just port over Trio of Towns and I'd be peachy.
>>2277409Probably our best hope. But even then, there are so many Harvest Moon games not yet remade. If they're going even roughly in release order, we're still easily a decade away from a 3oT port/remake.
>>2245124Just let the player force villagers to divorce through the witch. You can already magic away your own kids through her
>>2286801would only be acceptable to stardew fanbase if it also included hymen restoration & memory wipe
