A Trend I've noticed in the suggestions.

I can't help but notice that allot of the suggestions for the game right now have quite the focus on exploration and monsters rather than the farming aspects. I'm not saying that's a bad thing I'm just asking if anyone else has noticed this?

 

Alright, heres an idea. Random (rare) events that can occur during farming. Like digging up a pot of gold that leads to a leprechaun, or a plant trying to kill you, or a sudden attack on your crops from goblins or something.

Honestly though, in a number of Harvest Moon games, or most games in general, Farming is just a means to get something else, rather than it directly effecting everything. In Rune Factory, I farm for money and rune points (which is basically energy), and to use as gifts (because gifts in Rune Factory are far more strict than many others), but thats it really. I farm strawberries to get me a sword, and then I just run off and have fun.

Farming has always been a grind for the main content of the game. So to make it more interesting would be kind of tough. My suggestion would be that the actual crops you produce are the same, or some, of the same food that the villagers will eat, which in turn will affect their health. Your crops or produce could also affect what types of animals are attracted to your village and what types of villagers you can have move in.

 

I actually think Natsume's original formula was pretty balanced. The crops were always a minimal part of the experience, either being gifts or moneymakers, the rest of the experience was a minimal dating sim, exploration, and gathering. They broke up the standard day to day motions with special events like festivals, holidays, context sensitive moments that happened during certain months, etc.

To alter the farming gimmick is to take a risk. The general idea from HM was:

Plant stuff > Harvest > Sell > Buy more > Repeat

Impovements to that if any would likely be:

Ability to Eat Harvest for additional Stam / Stats

Ability to Stockpile Harvest for use on Farm (for Livestock, etc)

Ability to Donate Crops for non-specific "Good Fortune" random buffs, (Better Yield on next crop, special high $$ version of next crop, Gain Favor or reputation with town, etc.)

Besides that, I couldn't think of much else to change on that.

 

I am actually the kind of HM Player that is not really interested in anything other than farming

A few things that could be added to shake up the old formula would be to add the Ability to branch out a little. You could start off by adding buildable Biodomes where you can set the season inside to Plant Winter Crops in Summer for example.
Then you could build a Restaurant where the Chef only uses your Produce, more Ingredients on your Fields or Storage would mean more varied meals and higher quality food which in turn means the restaurant will be more profitable.
Also you could start building small production companys that start to Package and sell specific goods, you would have to hire and maintain a proper Workforce.

These are just examples, I am just thinking about having a whole layer of Industrialism in the game. I like Rune Factory but it just strikes me as odd that a farming Game would branch out into an RPG and not into a proper Industrial Simulation. If I wanted to go about slaying Monsters and finding Treasure there are hundreds of Games out there that are made for exactly that.

 

There are some great ideas in this thread.

 

Harvest Moon has evolved crops to an extent -- and I personally love the farming aspect of the games!

A lot of the things WMoose mentioned have been implemented in those games; namely, crops for use in stamina restoration (stats would be a great idea) and furthermore the cooking mechanics, fodder for livestock, and throwing crops to the Harvest Goddess.

I think those ideas can be taken a lot further, which is probably what you were talking about. It would be cool if, for livestock, making a feed blend with different crops. Different crops could yield different values for feed/cooking, which could give you different gains in the end result. I'm just rattling this off, I haven't a clue how certain mechanics are atm:

Let's say you have... sunflower seeds, millet, and corn. In the example, sunflower seeds are the basic food; the chickens like it, so it raises happiness or whatnot. Millet will give a bonus to egg yield, but corn will give a bonus to egg quality. That's a lot more deep than basic grass -> fodder, but you could take it even further! Make a feed blend with, say, Sunflower and corn, and you have happy chickens with high quality eggs. Need a lot of eggs to make pudding? Push millet on them. I think something like that (obviously with proper feed crops and such, and maybe add store-bought or gathered items as well) would be a really awesome addition and added importance to farming.

To translate that to cooking: let's say sunflower seeds give a boost to stamina restoration, tomatoes decrease your odds of getting sick, and potatoes make your stamina go further. A dish made with potato and tomato would help an expedition into a cave, and it would be a real benefit to stockpile those for recipes. This makes cooking more than basic stamina restoration and people more interested in monsters and spelunking have a reason to grow more crops.

You could make growing certain crops or being a good farmer parts of winning a potential spouse, too. Maybe you have the bachelor/ette that really admires someone who invests a lot of time and interest into their farm.

Anyways, I'm just throwing some things at the wall. Some things are very intricate to implement, but it's nice to just have the idea out there! Farming and crops have so much potential, and you can mix it with gathering and such to make some real nice concepts.

 

All of these ideas are actually quite awesome. Being able to manipulate your playstyle in such ways through clever crop growing would put a lot of depth into the game and really improve on the whole concept.

 

Yeah it is a little odd that it's not too focused on farming.

 

Absolutely love your ideas, Frisky Fox! Designing specialty feed mixes for livestock and special stat boosting recipes for your farmer would bring a whole new level of gameplay into Stardew Valley. It wouldn't just be a basic grind with the farming, it would make the farming aspect really important and interesting. Plus, Harvest Moon hasn't done this so Stardew Valley would really be breaking in some new territory. Go SV!

 

Yeah I have noticed this! I like having the option, but the appeal for me and my girlfriend is the farming above anything else. And even more so, the co-op aspect of running the farm.

 

I think its cause of Rune Factory.

 

Something that Ape mentioned in the interview with Scream112 on Metagaming (search for it on Youtube; it's almost 3 hours long as was very informative) was that he wanted a player to be able to play Stardew Valley, glomp on to one apsect about it (like the caves or farming or foraging or even fishing) and, if they did just that one apsect they could go through the entire game without having to do anything else. I assume this means you can, eventually, buy any resource you need (be it minerals, lumber, crops or fish). So you could play as a farmer, just a farmer, and you would never once need to set foot in the mines. You could be a woodsman, never once planting a single crop or an adventurer and never do a thing with your land. Your game would likely be richer if you tried your hand at each thing and maybe specialized at one or two, but that fact you don't HAVE to... that notion excites me.

I would love to see farming be very, very in depth. I would love to see custom feed blends as someone suggests, complicated food recipes that make a dish that will give you a big health and energy restore, provide a buff (like Rune Factory) or be a smash hit with someone as a gift. I would like to see Giant Crops; hard to engineer and demanding to raise, but incredibly profitable and a gift always well received (also like Rune Factory). Ape talked about engineering your own crops and I hope it does make the game in a big way.

• Combine a Lemon tree and a Lime tree for a special Lemon-Lime tree that produces both at the same time and to the same degree as each tree, allowing you to use less space, in effect getting two full, different trees worth of crops from a single tree.
• Engineering a crop with others to gain their ability to grow in that season (splicing the ability to grow in Spring into Tomatos so you get a special Early Bird Tomato plants that grow not only in Summer, but Spring as well)
• Make a very difficult to engineer strain of super Corn that grows, literally, year round; rain, sleet, snow, drought, pests and fungus - you name it, this Corn will grow and be just the same as Summer Corn. Based on the idea of the special strain of Corn from that Liam Neeson movie 'Unknown' that will feed the world because it will grow anywhere.
• A tree that bears a vine fruit in every season but Winter; ie, a Strawberry Tree or a Grape Tree.
• Engineer fungus that can grow in the sun so you can have plots of mushrooms right on the farm's surface.
• Combine Oranges and Apples into a new, insane super fruit
• And much, much more!

 

Because I am sure a lot of the people making suggestions outside the farming theme prefer other genres of games than the Harvest Moon style. Farming to the seems a side part doing other things. Where does it say that Stardew Valley is a farming game first and foremost with splashes of other things to mix it up a little? Is that description made obvious to first time lookers?
One could also guess that some people already have a clear idea that Stardew Valley will mimic Harvest Moon in all its glory and thus want to add an additional, equal awesome (in their opinion) extra that differs from the farming but does not exclude it.

 

Well it's referred to as a country-life RPG in the About and FAQ sections, implying it's a farming game. The first thing in the list of features is about farming on the About page, implying that it is a predominately farming.

 

For creating a farming challenge, introduce invasive species. Plants that will take over a plowed area if not seeded fast enough. Then introduce mechanics like plant this plant here to keep this other one at bay or make sure to surround this crop with rocks or fencing so it doesn't take over the entire field. And then if the invasive species can also be used for harvesting, like Bamboo, then people would have to work out if its worth keeping around.

Maybe this mechanic could also drive a companion planting aspect. Like plant carrots next to tomatoes to improve their quality.

Also just as an aside:
Pots that you can plant in. So that you can grow things anywhere.
Lots of decorative flowers.
Beekeeping.

 

Or Triffids

The recent HM games have been too easy in terms of farming. In Mineral Town, it took a lot of work - and even tool upgrades - just to clear your field a bit more so you could farm another plot or two. Then, whenever a storm blew through, you had to go clear the rocks and branches again. Invasive species would be even more fun. Possibly, a difficulty slider would be a good idea, since some people won't find it too relaxing... but fast-growing weeds, kudzu, hail, locusts, gophers, flooding, late hard frost, and so forth would make farming a lot more interesting, as long as there were ways of countering them.

Foxes in the henhouse, too.

 

I don't get the reference. But invasive animals could be a bridge between combat and farming gameplay.

 

So basically the second point I made about being harvest moon and wanting more in it is the 'more correct' vision of Stardew Valley. Still don't see any problems with that. Rune Factory pretty did the whole combat/grinding thing. Most games now-a-days have some form of combat involved. As I've picked up, Stardew Valley already has some form of fighting so it's not beyond someone making suggestion to "better" what exists (better being the word I use sparingly as not everyone has the same likes).

 

Well, yes, it is not beyond that, but it becomes a little annoying when every suggestion is about combat.

 

True true. That's where the game fanatics like us come in and suggest alternative things not relating to combat. Good number here came because of it being some sort of harvest moon-ish game which involved no combat at all. Just having another one out there like it is enough for some (hence a lot of quiet). But that's just my guess.