Sorry for the inactivity, everyone! Been a bit busy with school this past weekend.
Gonna make an update post soon!
Code_Name_Geek wrote:
Oh yeah, and to throw in my two cents on minigames, I personally enjoy them as a bonus when they're not required for story progression. For example, some BokuMono games had minigames you could play with your animals that gave you bonus friendship points, but were totally optional otherwise. Maybe that's a good way to incorporate minigames so that players can choose whether or not to play them?
I love this idea! Minigames as more of an enrichment than a skill check!
Kikki wrote:
Like...once you got the baby-into-child event, I wished you could build a small side plot onto your house, where your child could either actually garden/farm, or at least be seen to be gardening. Even if it has just been cosmetic, seeing them wander around a decorative plot with big sunflowers and pumpkins and chinese lantern plants or pussy willows or strawberries (plants children are typically fascinated by or love to just grab and eat) would have been really cool.
Though personally I like to stick with my one, original MC, and would like the child's events and progression to just make them more unique and interesting. Maybe the events for the child could allow you to play AS the child, for the duration of that event. Like...their first time running an errand alone, or a play date with other children in town, or learning from their parent how to grow crops or tend animals, or...I don't know, the possibilities are pretty endless. But I think it'd be pretty cool to get to play as the child during an event like that.
I don't think any Boku/Farm Sim game has ever done that. And I don't see why not. It seems like a really simple thing to do. We could even make a mini game out of it like the Harvest Sprite training games in Friends of Mineral town! All in all, the kids should
do something so the game doesn't feel over as soon as you have kids.
Blue Rose wrote:
By "rival kids" I mean kids produced from rival pairs. An example of really well implemented ones would be AP/ToT. The only con to those would be that if you married one of the pre-made parents, you would miss out on the rival kid. The solution to this would be have to have some kind of back up bachelor/ette who would be the parent in place.
If you wanted to do matchmaking, you could have kids tied to certain characters such as how Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fire Emblem: Fates have done it, but that is more work.
As far as the s/s adoption idea, that's good (and personally preferable to a deity randomly gifting you a child). You could have the "ask if they want to adopt" just "substitute" the pregnancy news event and have the "pregnancy/kid waiting" time duration be the same. It takes time for people to adopt kids irl so it doesn't have to happen instantaneously.
As far as child development goes, AWL/AnWL definitely had it best (although AP's was pretty good too) and I do wish we could have some thing like it again. But with AWL/AnWL, that really is framed around time passing on and characters aging and that would be a lot different than what most folks that enjoy the more modern Bokumono/farming games are used to. Not saying that as a good or bad thing, but that would be something to keep in mind.
But, if you just wanted the kids to grow to a certain age and nobody else; that is fine too and would work. If you wanted to have the "influence the child's interest" system, then 13-15 might be the ideal age.
These are really great ideas! I think pre-made rival kids are the way to go. We'll have to figure out how to navigate the situation in which you marry one of the parents of the rival kid but it'll be worth it!
We're leaning more towards the children growing up to a teen. AWL's child development went a long way to make marriage and raising a kid feel more involved and we're wanting to capture that feeling too.
Kikki wrote:I don't think this was brought up in this thread, but there are a couple of features I know are wanted in a fairly wide-spread way. (Not unanimously, of course...NO feature is ever unanimously popular). One is that a lot of us would feel more motivated (if achievements of any type exist in the game) if our achievements were worth more. And by that I mean...when you catch your thousandth fish or make your ten millionth dollar or...whatever...it'd be nice if the reward for that was at least a little more significant than just a few words appearing on the screen for two seconds to acknowledge that you'd done it.
Just something in-game that shows the impact your time spent and choices made have had. Extra dialogue and events to make the world and characters deeper and more real seems to be the most popular thing, I think.
Oh wow, I've never thought about that before! Villagers should take note of your achievements. Perhaps if you fish a lot, villagers will begin to ask for your advise on fishing spots and good bait.
Kikki wrote:
And in talking about that one, I've forgotten the other one I was thinking of, lol. But overall I think a major point of widespread success would be remembering that while there is no possible way in any reality to make everybody happy (this is why I hate the Natsume motto, which is literally "Make everybody happy!" IMPOSSIBLE.) ...there are different camps of farm-sim afficionados. What makes the game fun for one person makes it stressful or tedious for another. That's why I think making gameplay as flexible or customizable as possible is the key to pleasing the largest group of people...let them create their own game as much as they can while still working within the frame of the game you want to make. Let people choose their own difficulty. Let them focus on crops or animals or socializing, without making one clearly more important/useful than the others. Let people unlock things early via a bit of extra hard work, or simply wait it out peacefully. (Like I always bust my butt to unlock sweet potatoes by Fall of Year 1 in ANB, which is not easy...but it can be done if you're willing to put in the time/effort!)
You have no idea how much I love this philosophy of game design! I've always believed that the best games allow the player to create their own narrative/fun within the framework of the game itself. This is why I think Skyrim and Stardew are so popular. They both give the player the freedom to explore the world and come up with their own backstory for their player character and set their own goals.
Kikki wrote:
You could also frame the faith/reglion thing as magic/mythology/nature beliefs...something like that, potentially? Or don't call it
anything...just describe the in-game world situation when promoting the game, without labels as much as possible. Seems like a tricky thing, but I'm sure your team will come up with something good if you're going to this much effort to sound out your market and hash everything out.
Definitely agree with you on the magic/mythology/nature terms! That's more of what we're going for. It may have been a misstep to use those real world terms.