Repetition of events / Jarring disconnect with story

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by CrookedDesk, Jul 19, 2017.

?

How satisfied were you with Stardew Valleys Story / Festivals / Romance?

  1. 5

  2. 4

  3. 3

  4. 2

  5. 1

Results are only viewable after voting.
  1. CrookedDesk

    CrookedDesk Space Hobo

    When I first started playing Stardew Valley, I was completely addicted to the game.
    The gameplay was fun, light-hearted and refreshing, and it was also incredibly addictive.
    The characters also had their own things going on, and getting to know them was fun, and as a new member of the community, I totally felt included in things when I received letters from the Mayor giving me info on events.
    At the end of the first year, it truly felt like I had been a part of the community.

    However, playing through the game for my second year, I started feeling like I was stuck in some Groundhog Day-esque loop, all the mail I received was the same (Hey! We're holding X festival! come join us, it's about this!) which really struck me as odd, seeing as I already new that, and had participated last year.

    Everybody was still treating my PC as "that newcomer" despite me being married, having kids, and that whole speech Lewis gives about you being a member of the community.
    Even in the festivals, all the dialogue is exactly the same as it was the first year. The villagers are in the same positions, doing and saying the same thing to the player character, regardless of friendship levels, progress, or marriage.

    I think this game really did well in that first year, but made a mistake in that the second year is just the first year all over again, but you're starting with a better farm. The game is only actually a year long storywise, yeah there's still more content to do gameplay wise, level up your equipment, upgrade your farm, restore the community centre, but none of these things actually change how people interact with you.

    Even getting married changes virtually nothing, there's very little additional dialogue with your spouse, they pretty much turn into another machine for the farm, their personality just comes to an abrupt halt when you marry them, which gets kinda awkward.

    I understand that the dev was one guy working from home on a sub-par machine in sub-par conditions with sub-par technology, but I still think these issues should be brought to light for future updates, I'd love to see some addition to the storyline, so the game isn't just one year long, I understand the gameplay is technically limitless, and you obviously can't make a story that long, but at least making one up to the 3-4 year mark would be nice.
     
      nekoCrimson and Marco93 like this.
    • Lilliput

      Lilliput Supernova

      One solution to this, I think, would be to introduce a bit more randomization into the game. There is already a small 'quest generation' engine where the game strings together a villager and a goal and puts them up on Pierre's bulletin board. It's a very simple model of something that could be done on a larger scale. Imagine if every villager had a little bit of random dialogue generation, or every festival had some random variations on events to keep you guessing. The Luau could be a potluck one year and a BBQ the next. The Spirit's Eve maze could be procedurally generated (as the mine levels were during early game development). The egg hunt could be randomly scattered with a chance of /any/ participant (not just Abby) being the winner. And so on. Yes, setting that sort of thing up takes more effort to program than just making a map or writing some dialogue, but it also gives the game more replay value. You'd still eventually see everything and get bored, but it would certainly take longer and the random elements would add a certain unpredictable nature that would be fun.
       
      • CrookedDesk

        CrookedDesk Space Hobo

        I think that's a great solution to the problem, and maybe now that ConcernedApe has access to many more resources than he initially did, now that he's got more money and recognition, he could even add a slightly random AI to the villagers, so their set schedules become more of a guideline, and the villagers perform randomly generated tasks at certain locations instead. Because at first the schedules feel exactly like, well, schedules, but as time goes on they begin to lose their personality and charm, because of how set-in-stone they always act.
         
          nekoCrimson likes this.
        • Trenix

          Trenix Twenty-three is number one

          The story was pretty bad and many parts were awkward and laughable. Like when Linus taught you how to make the new bait, that was just, really inappropriate. Not sure if that was intended or done without realizing it, which I highly doubt. Also there is so much fantasy aspects that it's not surprising that the storyline is pretty unusual and hollow. That might be good thing though, because then you can make sense of what you feel doesn't make sense.

          Also marriage is definitely pointless in this game. I rushed it thinking my spouse would actually help me in some way. Unfortunately all she does is do something once a week, mostly it's pointless like watering my crops or feeding my animals when everything is already automated. Cooking food is nice, just happens rarely even when she's happy and afterwards she doesn't do anything for the entire day. She doesn't even assist with income. In Harvest Moon your spouse would assist you daily with chorus. Yet in this game, these chorus aren't as meaningful and some chorus wouldn't work in here because you have crafting, processing, and automated systems.
           

          Share This Page