End game ideas

I find that most RPGs become less interesting once your character has maxed his or her skills/stats, so here's a few ideas I have for Stardew Valley:

1. Add some sort of option to play as a child who inherets some of the parents' skills but not all. This would be even better if you HAD to do this because your character aged and "retired."
2. Add traits that can be lost under certain circumstances. For example, a trait that makes you better at tending to animals but can be lost if you fail too many times to keep an animal alive.
3. Similar to #2, make certain circumstances lower existing skill levels.

In terms of the world itself, here's some more:

1. Have randomized villagers move in and out of the village based on your relationship with them.
2. Link certain buildings with "types" of these random villagers. For example, a rich villager moves in so a fancy house is built.
3. Let NPC villagers have kids as well. This could be a way for new villagers to move in and old ones to retire and would make the world feel really alive.
4. Have weather do things to the villager, not just the player's crops. For example, the town hall or a local shop could be damaged by a storm and villagers (including the player) could pitch in to supply building materials to fix it.

In any case, keep up the great work on this game. Truly looking forward to it.

 

I agree with you; games can get pretty boring once you max out all your stats, though I don't play most RPGs long enough to run into that problem.
Anyway, I like your second idea, (and, thus, the third one as well) but I'm not so sure about the first one. Perhaps if you could alternate between the parent and the child, that would be pretty cool.

 

Oooo, I love #1. In one of the newer harvest moons you can start over as one of your children. I'd love to be able to train up one of my children then choose to play as them. I' d love to be able to take them, some tools or items, money, or an animal or two and completely start over. Of course I'd love to have this option available at all times. Maybe at like the bus station. Buy a ticket to another "Stardew valley", back some luggage, and move to a new place.

I'm not sure bout the aging part though. I'd suggest that the original character or "parents" don't die and age unless the player has already switched characters to the child. This should keep both pro children inheriting and those against it happy.

 

What you're asking for really isn't possible in terms of a sprite based game, at least if you want the characters to still have unique portraits. Random villagers that move in and out works for Animal Crossing because none of the villagers in Animal Crossing have any in-depth characteristics or appearances, it's models with various eye types, species or clothes slapped on them. I get the feeling people would more enjoy non-randomized characters with custom dialogue and events.

Having your character age would mean every other character in the village would have to age as well, which is also difficult to do in a sprite-based game. You have to do normal sprites and portraits for all 40+ characters in the village, old-age sprites and portraits for their kids, teenage, adult and old age. It's really much more easy to have no one in the village age like any other Harvest Moon game, have unique villagers, only allow people to have kids that don't age and not have some sort of lineage system. That is, unless you want to add another year or two into the game development time.

 

If aging and children are limited to players it would be a lot easier to script in. The villagers would then remain untouched by time.

 

This is like Rune Factory 2, where you get to play as the kid
Good idea but I think it's wise to only apply this to Singleplayer worlds
Would be uber confusing in multiplayer o.o

 

Oh dear I didn't think of that. It would make it complicated. Maybe if there was a nametag attached above the players? Once switched the left behind character would simply resort to a regular npc.

 

Ah, switching between father/mother to son/daughter ey?
Good idea, now you have an NPC that has Max skill levels

 

True, to keep it from getting complicated or having players snatching up theses npc so they don't have to do the work to build skills you can make it so theses npcs are owned by that player and are unavailable for other players to change to. Then they can choose to give theses npc to others or to share between a select group.

 

What if the mother and father are actual players and has only one kid, they take turns controlling their kid?

 

Hmm that would have to be chosen between the players.It would be a shared ownership. Or its whoever switches first.

 

So, hopefully, you'll get twins
But then, you'd have to choose the other NPCs daughter/son to woo :l

 

Thanks for all of the thought provoking responses. I guess I should have prefaced my first post with stating that I do not think ALL of these ideas could or should work together. For example, with some sort of skill/trait loss I don't think you'd need to even bother with the aging and retirement stuff. Obviously from a development standpoint I think aging would be a huge undertaking. It has been done in some sim games (The Sims, The Guild, Crusader Kings) fairly well, but those games also aren't sprite based. Even still, I think that having a set of NPCs that don't always reside in the town and can rotate out for various reasons would be cool and keep the world feeling fresh and like it's constantly changing. For example, maybe a particular village could go on vacation. This would open up cool possibilities with things like that villager eventually returning and bringing something back. Basically I just don't want to get to a point in the game where everything is the same, all the time, either with my character or the world around him/her.

 

You haven't played Island of Happiness then, where they pulled it off. Some have portraits, some don't. Simple to do, really.

 

That sounds like a pretty fun feature, particularly if these visitors could buy and/or sell some uncommon items to or from the player. Which makes me think of another feature I'm pretty sure has been in some of the harvest moon games: setting up a stall to sell your wares in. I'm not sure how or if this would work in Stardew Valley, but just another thought.

 

I remember this game. I think it was on a weekend when you could do this. Other stalls would open selling special goods. A market place on the weekends with random tourist and traveling merchants would be interesting. Never know what you'll get.

 

Random visitors..hm..
I remember this one NPC from Rune Factory who sells machines that were pretty useful, like cheese maker and such
Will there be any NPC such as that?
Although, I'm beginning to notice that this thread is..getting way off-topic..

Back to End-Game topic!
I do like the idea of buildings getting mashed and wrecked by decay and natural disaster, repairing public buildings will boost relationship or get a discount for a week or so, depending on what building you're repairing..like the General Store building (although can get repetitive)
Well, other than getting maxed attributes, you can try digging your way all the way down into the cavern, I've heard it's like 100 levels deep with different biomes and monsters in it, so good luck finishing that. I wonder if there's any way to transport between levels..like a teleporter in each 10 levels.
Traits degrading due to inactive..pretty steep but pretty good for the immersion. Just make sure it'll start degrading like a week later or so, like you haven't fished for a week, it'll start to degrade. Failing on the other hand..shouldn't degrade it, after all, we learn more from failing

 

Well the problem with #2 is that what if animals die of old age? Will you lose traits then?