Make the Children you can have in the game more useful

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by tom7351, Nov 1, 2017.

?

Do you think the idea posted below is a good suggestion

Poll closed Jan 8, 2018.
  1. not really

    1 vote(s)
    5.3%
  2. Yes

    18 vote(s)
    94.7%
  1. tom7351

    tom7351 Void-Bound Voyager

    Hello fellow farmers!

    I had a suggestion for the child system in Stardew Valley. Here it is

    The suggestion i want to make is that the children can grow up 2 stages more: Child and Teenager.
    Having a child makes it so you need to pay for the school of your children (that can be added) This makes it more focused on the money you have spare, what my suggestion would be is 5000 gold a season. You can pay this at any time you want. If you choose not to fund your kids, they can't go to the 4th stage and act like a toddler but slightly bigger. Which brings me to the teenager. The teenager is still required to go to school but when he is home he either
    • makes his homework
    • goes to watch some television
    • Help you on the farm
    with helping on the farm i mean watering the plants, feeding the animals, collecting the special buildings like furnaces bee huts etc. this makes the teenager extremely useful if you aren't on the farm to mine or if you are buying something. If you choose not to send the teenager to school he will be just like the toddeler
    My suggested bedtimes are: for the child is 7AM - 8 PM and for the teenager 6: 30AM - 10 PM

    To sum this up, I would like that you can grow your toddlers to children and teenagers and if you pay the seasonally fee you have a big bonus with not doing your farming chores everyday.

    See you guys on the farm

    Tom7351
     
    • tom7351

      tom7351 Void-Bound Voyager

      If you guys have any comments or suggestions to this thread, Please put them down below. I will try to reply to them all ;)
       
      • Reneeisxena

        Reneeisxena Big Damn Hero

        I really like the idea of kids being more than just another pet that runs around the house. Right now they don't even speak and only respond with a heart. I would love to see an actual age progression. I am in my second farm now and I'm thinking of NOT getting married and having kids because there really doesn't seem to be a point to it. By the time I got married on my first farm I already had auto-feeders so my husband saying he fed the animals is just silly. He did fix fences and occasionally make me breakfast, and as I stated all the kids do is run around. During the day there is no one there to watch them so what really is the point of having them?
         
        • Fineya

          Fineya Space Hobo

          I like the idea very much and I think it isn´t wrong if the children come to you in the next day whit a "present" like: "Hey mummy/daddy, Yesterday I found something in the woods/beach. Hope you like it" or something like that
           
          • Phea

            Phea Big Damn Hero

            Yes, this would be great. Maybe during the day they'll go outside and 'play' a little and return home at 5, and then they can give you something they found.
             
            • AliCat

              AliCat Poptop Tamer

              I would like it if the children would also grow up to the same age as Jas and Vincent then go to school with them with Penny.

              Then on the weekend they can go out and play, help you on the farm, give you presents that they found and by interacting with them makes them tell you about the things they have learned.
              Perhaps they can tell you information that will help you in the game like:
              • what time to fish for particular types and what season and weather.
              • recite information of the artefacts that you have found and donated to the library.
              • tidbits about Yoba or the origins of the different festivals.
              • Information about why the Ferngill Republic is at war with the Gotoro Empire
              Maybe you have to fill up a heart meter with them once they get to that age and there are little hart events that can occur like:
              • they are having trouble becoming friends with Vincent or Jas and they need help.
              • having trouble with homework
              • they have to cook something to show penny but need the cooking ingredients Once you get them you have a cooking animation with them and deepening on your choices during the scene the food will come out good or bad. (perhaps +50 for good, +20 for bad)
              • help them to remember their lines for a performance that Penny is getting the kids do for the town
              • once you get 10 hearts then the player get's to see the kids preform.

              You then get an achievement for "Grate Parenting" or something.
               
              • tom7351

                tom7351 Void-Bound Voyager

                And maybe even a part in the shrine! #ideastorm
                 
                  kstormgemini and AliCat like this.
                • Honor Shipping

                  Honor Shipping Big Damn Hero

                  My thing is that having them actively help on the farm like that when you're not physically at the farm would not only be difficult to accomplish, but also affect game performance in regards to running smoothly. I think that at most they should end up being like your child does in Rune Factory 4, where while they don't help, they still go about the town and act like another towns-person. Besides, you have sprinklers to water plants, something I would be surprised if someone didn't have access to by the time they got married. And as for the others, that's something you should probably be doing yourself, especially the animal feeding. I'd rather do that myself so that if something goes wrong, at least I know it was me and not the game.
                   
                    Aurora Moon likes this.
                  • tom7351

                    tom7351 Void-Bound Voyager

                    I understand why you are saying that. But if they can do it with the junimo in some part i think they can also do it for children. I think it can be done with a simple math equation, the amount of tiles that need to be watered * average water time for a normal farmer= how many tiles watered per ingame hour.
                     
                      AliCat likes this.
                    • AliCat

                      AliCat Poptop Tamer


                      It could be that they only collect a things with in a certain radius of the farm house. Or you could have a child's play house or tree house that could be build by Robin and within a certain radius of the play/tree house they would collect stuff for you on random days and leave a small box or bag of the items that have collected inside the house like a present with a note saying:

                      "Was playing farming today and got this for you. x"

                      in cute child's hand writing or something.
                       
                      • tom7351

                        tom7351 Void-Bound Voyager

                        And with that. The children can ask if vincent and jas come over to play, the event will take up 3 hours IGT and give you half a heart extra friendship.
                         
                        • AliCat

                          AliCat Poptop Tamer

                          Just whipped this up but the Tree House could look like this.

                          Stardew Treehouse.png

                          Version with Vincent, Jas and a mock up of the Players kid.
                          treehouse with kids.png
                           
                            Last edited: Dec 4, 2017
                          • tom7351

                            tom7351 Void-Bound Voyager

                            Did you make this or did you pick this of the internet?
                             
                            • AliCat

                              AliCat Poptop Tamer

                              I made it in illustrator with some of the trees from the games as colour reference.
                              Same as my avatar.

                              I think i need to make the swing a bit longer, it looks to high. lol

                              EDIT:

                              Decided to edit the swing and make each season.

                              TreeHouse finished.png
                               
                                Last edited: Dec 4, 2017
                              • tom7351

                                tom7351 Void-Bound Voyager

                                It looks beautiful! I hope the devs or someone with a contact sees this and makes it real, this is a amazing idea in my opinion!
                                 
                                  AliCat likes this.
                                • nekoCrimson

                                  nekoCrimson Subatomic Cosmonaut

                                  I don't think it even has to be super complicated - they don't necessarily have to help out on the farm or anything (I mean, by time they're married, most players already have their farms set up where the extra help is unnecessary. Like feeding animals with auto-feeders, or watering crops with sprinklers, etc). But it'd be nice for immersion. Maybe they could water the dog/cat bowl. I mean, even as toddlers they could interact with the dog/cat. It'd give the pet something to do, too. Currently they're mostly just there for the aesthetic. I think the heart events idea could play into having a dog/cat, but then there's a lot of variables for CA/a hypothetical modder to account for when writing them. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but when my parents have pets, they're kind of the "family pet", especially when I was a kid. ... I guess that can depend on what kind of family you have, though.

                                  If they aged up too much, it'd break immersion. But the rest of the town doesn't seem to age up at all, so I think it'd be best if they stopped at around Vincent and Jas' age. The time period might be a little weird though. If it's too short, again, it risks breaking immersion, but if it's too long it can get boring quickly, especially since this would hypothetically be end-game and you might not have much to do while waiting (maybe something can be added to the witch's hut, in addition to turning them to doves you can also advance their age by one season). They can go to their lessons with Penny, but past that it depends on their personalities. I feel like it'd be really interesting if you had two kids and they had "opposite" interests, i.e, one being book-smart and the other preferring physical activity.

                                  Being too specific makes it less likely to happen, but I don't have a lot of hope for this in the first place, so at least I'm throwing my ideas out there, lol

                                  Also AliCat I love your tree swing! It sounds like the kind of thing that would fit perfectly with a children expansion patch/mod, and fits in with Stardew's environment! Excellent work!
                                   
                                  • tom7351

                                    tom7351 Void-Bound Voyager

                                    I know mate, Alicat has amazing artwork! i understand that you think that they could age up too much but with that i think that if you turn into a teenager, Vincent and Jas will follow in a month, with that you can give them a gift for their birthday making the relationship between you and then AND the child, the amount of friendship point gotten is like the luau festival with the soup.
                                    I wanted to add a idea, this is a idea that I came up with 2 mins ago. When the child becomes a teenager you can start a new game but with the old farm and 1/4th of the money. this is a idea that i'm still not sure about but i do want to be open to the community about it
                                     
                                      kstormgemini and AliCat like this.
                                    • nekoCrimson

                                      nekoCrimson Subatomic Cosmonaut

                                      The "restarting the farm" thing seems to be a sentiment that I've seen a few times in the suggestions forums, but it's not a sentiment that I share, so I'm not the right person to ask lol. But it does seem to be something other people are interested in for sure.

                                      As for the teenager thing... I'm honestly keeping to my original opinion. Plus, Vincent and Jas already have birthdays in-game - the birthday feature is a pretty important one in the game, actually, when you're trying to raise relationships. And if they're... what, roughly 9-12 years old (ignoring the never-aging thing), and then you bump them up to teenagers (do you mean mid-teens like 15-16 or late teens like 17-19, by the way? Just out of curiosity) you would also have to bump up everyone else's age to go along with it (including characters like Evelyn and George, who are already very old and... the direction that that kind of development could go into could be pretty bad, honestly). It's a lot more work all around, and conflicts with the "ageless" feeling of the game that makes it so great to me. In some of the Harvest Moon games, where the game "ends" after a certain amount of time (I think the standard is 3 years? I could be wrong), I felt very rushed and wasn't able to enjoy the game for what it was as easily, because if I wanted to explore the game then I had to do everything absolutely perfect by the first day and it was just stressful. I know that's not the universal experience, but with Stardew Valley there isn't any real repercussion for "messing up", except maybe that you have to wait longer to do so-and-so activity (for example, you don't have to worry about relationships until year 3 if you would rather focus on skills first, etc) and I can create my farm how I want to. It also adds replay value, because it gives me space to do things differently and to experiment in ways that some other games make me feel to anxious to try. This is especially true after 1.05 when Grandpa's evaluation could be redone (which, as far as I'm aware, is/was the only "time limit" in the game except for optional quests), which leads me to believe that the timeless effect is the intention of the developer, rather than something that just happened out of nowhere.

                                      Whereas having the player's kids age up enough to catch up with the NPCs, but not surpass them, adds to the experience without adding any other sense of rush. It essentially adds 2 new NPCs (and potentially modifies the behavior of 3 or 4 already existing NPCs) without also taking anything away from the game.

                                      That's not to say you're wrong though, just that we have different opinions. I think we can both agree that having them be eternal toddlers feels pretty bland though :p
                                       
                                      • tom7351

                                        tom7351 Void-Bound Voyager

                                        I understand your opinion, i think the best way to do this is a poll, I will try to add the poll.
                                         
                                          AliCat likes this.
                                        • Monopoly

                                          Monopoly Poptop Tamer

                                          I really hope to see more purpose for children. Having them help you around the farm would be great, decent dialogue as well. Perhaps the occasional gift?

                                          Though I doubt this will happen, i'd love to see some events with kids, maybe a play date that you have to attend. Perhaps a school opens and you have to do various events with that (parent-teacher night?)


                                          The idea that kids should grow, and eventually become teenagers is a great idea. I'd love to see them grow up eventually and even perhaps move out. Maybe someone in town (though new homes would need to be created) or to "another town" to where they are basically just gone, perhaps the occasional visit or letter from them. Which would allow for you to have more kids in a longer playthrough.
                                          This would encourage you to have more kids, bring more life (and help) into the world! Perhaps you would even remarry? (Interesting game mechanic)
                                          This may not be for everyone, so perhaps there would need to be something you could do to keep kids young forever, as they are currently.

                                          Though i'd love to see this happen, and the idea of families growing, and as much never ending gameplay as possible. I don't see this happening. It would be a lot of work, and not everyone would enjoy it (though you could add an item that keeps the kids young, as they are now, which would give options to those that dislike the change.)

                                          I know this game is it's own game, but is based off a variety of other games, I have always felt as though Harvest Moon lacked family content. You'd start a family, but there was never a lot you could do with them, especially the kids. Which is a shame, and I really hope Stardew Valley changes that. The family aspect of the game is what intrigues me the most about games like this.
                                           

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