So I just got to year 3 and I'd like to give some constructive criticism and ideas

This post is very obviously going to be full of spoilers. You've been warned
(I made a post of this on reddit, but was advised to do so on the forums instead.)

So I finally got to the evaluation and figured I played enough to render some kind of judgement.

Obviously I'm going to say I absolutely love this game to bits. I was an avid Harvest Moon fan as a kid, and this game is all that and more.

Now obviously the game had some kinks, and it'd be easy to point out such kinks. So I'd like to offer a solution to every problem I point out. As such I've made an entire list of everything I ran into that I figured could be done better.


Animals!

I'll not beat around the bush, and start with the biggest hindrance. Animal interaction is completely awful. Ideally you'd want each animal to only occupy one tile. But the moment animals intersect, it's impossible to pet the other one, and it'll just keep opening the stat screen of the one you already petted.
As possible solution, either make the stat screen right click only, and petting left click only. (Or vice versa), or make it so that you interact with the animal that you click on, instead of the tile that the animals are on. Alternatively, prioritize the animal that hasn't been pet yet.

Now it doesn't end there either. I've once been locked inside my chicken coop for 4 (ingame) hours because while I was picking up eggs and putting them into the mayonnaise makers, 4 animals managed to bunch up near the exit. I'm not sure if I glitched out, or if it's not possible with small animals, but I couldn't run into them to phase through them.
Now I don't know a simple solution right off the bat for this, but I do remember that in Harvest Moon you could pick up the small animals.

And finally. God forbid the day that a cow stands on your horse and decides to stick around, because you won't be able to get on your horse until you get the cow away. Which in certain fence setups can be really tough. As a solution, prioritize the horse, always.
I've also seen people get stuck in the stable with their horse, and generally I believe the horse could be better handled. You should be able to talk to people while on the horse, interact with certain other things like you can with the coop and barn shutters. You should be able to get off your horse while in tight spaces, and perhaps its interaction hitbox should be smaller. You could also change it so that you use left click to dismount and right click to interact.

Grass is also a thing that has baffled me. When you open the door of the barn/coop. Animals come out and home in directly towards the first piece of grass. This ends up with your animals acting like a very slow systematic lawn mower. The solution would also be pretty simple. Have the animal find the shortest path to grass, move there, and then randomly move into a direction for a short while and eat.

Another small thing I'd like to see happen is that there's a graphical cue if your cows and goats can be milked. I simply feel awful every time I tug on those poor animals and they have nothing to give.
Alternatively: Remove the message that a cow/goat has no milk. Make the bucket do nothing if you 'miss' or use it on an animal that has no milk. And make the animation/sound of milking an empty animal shorter.

I've read it left and right that people don't enjoy animal husbandry, and I believe with these few changes, and possibly a price change on animal goods could make them more popular and rewarding.


Quality inconsistency (Botanist skill)

I went for botanist because I thought it'd be awesome for all the foraging items to be the highest quality, it's possibly even a bit overpowered. Now the text is a bit misleading, because everything I pick up manually from the floor becomes the highest quality. That includes shells from the beach, foraging items you get from seasonal seeds, items you pick up from your cave and the mine, and even truffles. What it doesn't include is the exact same items, but from crab pots, from digging with the hoe, mining rocks, or from slaying enemies. Everything that is dropped instead of picked up manually. I suggest that this skill becomes what called and what it's describing. That all foraging fruits, plants and mushrooms will be gold quality, while shells and coral and truffle remain entirely random.


Random Events and RNG

Having finished the second year, I'm still missing quite a few things to finish up my collections. All of the things I'm missing comes down to RNG. Hard to come by artifacts, certain recipes, and the void egg. One of the artifacts I'm missing is one that's supposedly only to be found at the bus stop. And I've gotten a lot of duplicate artifacts from there, so it's not a lack of trying. I've also never had the witch fly over, or a meteor, or even Iridium ore in the quarry, let alone a Mystic stone. I managed to get a fairy a single time, whereas I hear others having them 3 times a year.
I had to read these things on a wiki by accident to figure out that they were able to happen. I can safely say I hate spoilers.
In regards to the events, there either needs to be some sort of hidden trigger that makes sense, with hidden lore much like the tombstone to explain a hidden method. Or there should be a guarantee that things like this will happen well within the first 2 years.
As for the rare items. I think it'd be fair for drops that you haven't gotten yet to get a higher chance of dropping than ones you haven't. Make items you've gotten more than once have a lower chance of appearing. Alternatively, tie the rarer items in with luck.

Of course, with the latest patch, you can be re-evaluated. And I managed to get 4 candles without knowing how, I'm guessing the system was thrown around. I didn't have all stardrops, fish or artifacts. So in the end this isn't too dramatic. But it's still ridiculously discouraging to be grinding against RNG.


Luck?

I still don't get how luck works. I used to think that I saw a noticeable effect on the mine ladders, but I've had the same luck on terrible days and on lucky days with buffs. I feel that luck should have a bigger influence.
If you have great luck on one day it should make people hesitate on their plans on their day and say "screw it, going to the mines instead". Right now, I don't even bother checking my fortune anymore, because it simply hasn't mattered a single time.


Quality fertilizer

Currently it is simply too expensive to craft. With the 1 fish to 1 tile ratio I'm imagining that there's a bunch of fish strewn out over the entire land. Fish chunks wherever you look. Alternatively, I realize that realistically you're supposed to bury the fish, but one fish per plant is still a lot. I simply never sell any fish anymore because of this.
I figure a more 'fair' ratio would be 1 fish and 5 sap for 2. Fishing takes too much time to justify the cost. Buying it from the shop and making back the money is less of an effort. And I believe that hand-crafted things are always supposed to be worth more.


I know there's a suggestion thread, but making 2 posts feels sorta silly, so here's...
Some ideas:

• Sales! Before the latest patch quality fertilizer was 20. Coincidentally it was the first of the month for me when the patch hit, so I thought this was some kind of sale. This brought me to the idea that every first of the month (or maybe end of the previous month) there should be a sale on items like fertilizer and perhaps last season's trees, maybe other things as well.
• Chest variety! I would love to see more chests like there are light sources like golden and iron chests, maybe even stone and quartz varieties. Perhaps also larger chests if that wouldn't be too hard to program in. A larger fridge would also be very appreciated.
• Relationships with Pierre, Gus, Clint, Marnie and other hidden merchants should increase with every thing you purchase. They should appreciate you more for your business. I even remember Marnie saying that if I take care of my animals she'll like me more. Is this even true?
• PDA! A calendar in your pocket. It could be put into your wallet and appear as tab at the top. Can also look at all seasons. Should probably be around 15000G or something.
• Shipping crate upgrade! Allows you to take back more than one item.
• Skull Cavern carts. There's ladders to take you down one level. There's holes to take you down multiple levels. Now it'd be awesome to have minecarts that stick out the side of a cavern that could either take you down a bunch more levels, or back up. Much like the boardgame snakes and ladders.
• Upgrade for the scythe! You could charge the scythe and either cut a larger area in front of you, or create a cutting whirlwind that shoots forward. This would obviously be a lategame upgrade.
• Seed spreader. An item that would contain seeds (like the slingshot and fishing rod), which would place the seeds in a 3x3 grid. Also upgradable?
• Getting all skills! Some lategame manner of being able to get all the skills you're able to pick from. Perhaps leveling the same tree again, needing a ton more experience than before for the levels. The dots in the levels could turn gold and purple. Possibly level 15 would give the second level 5 skills. Level 20 would give you another choice of level 10 skill of the one you got at 15. Level 25 would give another choice of the 2 level 10 skills that are left, and level 30 would give the final one.
• Baby noises! The baby and toddler are not making any sound at all. It'd be nice if the baby would giggle or something when throwing it, or gave an acknowledgement of you giving attention to them.

I figured I'd also add some bugs that I ran into, not entirely sure if I should post them here, but hey, if it's being read, maybe something will be done about it.

Bugs:

• You can get a new watering can; and possibly every other tool, by leaving it in a chest inside the slime hutch, and possibly every other building.
• While fishing, you can click the Quest button (hud only, not hotkey) to pause time while waiting for fish to bite without time advancing.
• Clint's ore collecting quest can be completed by holding right click on copper from a chest. Only requires 1 copper. You also don't have to have it on you to complete it.
• Crows can eat your crops if you replaced your scarecrow the day before.
• Getting on your horse while holding a directional arrow can result into the horse's animation glitching and not making the walking noise.
• Possibly not a bug, but grown Seasonal seeds (and large crops) cause the land to revert to untilled land, this feels unnecessary (and is also a lot of work).
• Floor 'skins' are swapped upon house upgrade.
• Dog is sleeping outside, in the winter, while it's snowing. I don't want it to die!
• You can put chairs on tables. For the love of god why?

If you managed to read through all of that, thanks.
In the end I just hope that these things will either be useful enough to be passed along, or even be read by ConcernedApe himself.

 

Yeah, animals need some work. While selling cheese and mayonnaise daily is great and keeps you from relying on the "all or nothing" income from crops, petting the animals is a pain, you can get stuck on them, they constantly overlap each other and cause you to spend tons and tons of time (and clicks!) trying to make sure you got to all of them... no visual indicator of whether cows or goats are ready to be milked/have been milked. It would be really nice if the animals would line up in stalls to be milked during certain times of the day (like 6 AM to 10 AM or somesuch) and then they would wander freely from then on - that would solve pretty much everything.

As it stands, I only have like 7 animals in my barn and getting the milk and wool out of them is so much more difficult and frustrating than it needs to be. "Missing" with the milking pail 6 times a day due to finicky movement, overlapping animals, and bizarre-as-shit hit boxes is slowly driving me up the wall (and creating a drive to just sell all my animals and be done with the whole infuriating process, to be honest).

 

..i put a rarecrow on my table once.
no one sat within an 8 tile radius of it.

 

While I agree with most of your post, I need to point this out due to it simply being false, and I can't stand the spread of misinformation. I originally believed this was the case, but if you ACTUALLY craft it (Which I must assume you haven't, because) you will receive FIVE Quality Fertilizers per recipe.

That still seems low, you REALLY have to grind out a LOT of fish if you want to cover a late-game field with quality fertilizer. I think 1-fish-to-10-fertilizer would be better.

 

I completely agree with you on the false spreading of information. But I'm not mistaken. Out of 1 fish and 2 sap, you only get 1 quality fertilizer, I literally just booted up my game to verify.

Additionally I should add, I had the idea of 1 fish and 10 sap for 5 fertilizers, but after a day or 2 of fishing, I simply had a lot of fish and it'd be a bit overkill to do so, but I suppose that's up to the dev.

 

I agree with everything here, and have also found a bug of my own. I was in town with my horse after delivering the Dwarf Scroll III to Gunther. It was my last one, and he gave me the Dwarf translation book. I wanted to get to the Dwarf shop to see what he had, and in my haste, I hit the buttons too quickly whilst trying to get onto the mine cart and didn't pay attention to what my character was doing. The picture shows the end result.

 

Hah, I actually managed to get into the sewers with my horse before, but immediately got kicked out of the sewers again because the game saw me as stuck or something.

 

You are correct, my apologies. I could've sworn I received 5 fertilizer per fish, I remember fertilizing an entire field with about 50 fish... maybe an earlier patch?

I digress- I have some bugs of my own to mention, that you may want to add-

Panning and holding a directional key will cause the player to 'slide' instead of performing the walking animation once they finish. (Honestly looks like sliding on Heelies, please don't remove"

Someone should mention, and maybe most people haven't noticed because they haven't eaten food recipes, but there are a LOT of food that don't give the buffs they mention, and will cancel other buffs you have up.

 

You're probably thinking of the Deluxe Speed-Gro fertilizer, where 1 Oak Resin and 1 Coral yield a 5-pack of Speed-Gro.

 

Figured I'd update with the news that I finally got a witch visit my coop on the 27th night of spring year 3. I'm currently hatching so I can finish the ship all items achievement.
Additionally, finally caught all fish, managed to fish up a Rusty Spur at the same time and currently need 4 more artifacts. Woooo~

 

Tbh the fact that you can milk anything is ridiculous. You can even milk the villagers or thin air! It really should only play the animation if you are trying to milk the cow/goat and nothing else. Same with shears.

 

And, adding insult to injury, the game doesn't pause while your character is doing the Milk Pail Hump, so each accidental mis-click also wastes your arguably most precious resource: in-game time.

 

I... I can't say I've actually ever made an attempt to milk the villagers.

 

Not a bug but an improvement I'd like to see....access to all the bag slots at any time. To feed the cheese/mayonnaise/kegs...I have to open the bags, move the items to the top row and then deposit them. Can't I reach into my bags and get something from the bottom row to use without the 'open bag move item to top row, close bag, use item' ?

 

Right click on the box when you're standing directly next to it. When your inventory pops up, you can left-click on every stack you want to toss in the box to "sell" stuff from any inventory slot.

 

Yes, but that doesn't work when you're standing in front of your crafting machines, like cheese maker or keg, etc.

 

Fair enough. I think I misread your post, my bad.