Top Five Wants, Top Five Needs! (And one Suggestion...)

[Novus]

Okay, so I've been playing for over 100 hours and I think it's safe to say I am officially addicted to this game. And so, I have had a lot of time to think about what I would L-O-V-E to see implemented. So here's my wants vs needs:

NEEDS:
1) Probably everyone's top need - the ability to make the days longer. Lord knows, I love to utilize every single inch of my farm, max out my animal buildings, and then balance the remainder of the day with mining, fishing, digging, etc... Needless to say, I maxed out farming and animal care fairly quickly. I'd say the hardest one to get up is archaeology due to the limited number of dig spots - and it's hard to fit that into the daily tasks when you want to do everything else. I loved Sun Haven for this reason. I dunno why, but I loved the blood, sweat, and tears associated with playing a 40 minute day. I was able to get all the crops I wanted, all the fish I wanted, do a little bit of mining in the cave and talking to every villager. Day time expansion is a must-have!

2) Pets! If I can dress like a cat (dude, where is the cat tail?), then I want cats! I have designed my house to be as suffocatingly cute and pink as possible. Now I need cats everywhere - and let's add cats of every color! Let's be able to breed them like the ranch animals and have adorable litters upon litters of KITTENS! Maybe have them help you - like with collecting insects or bringing you artifacts or something even simple like sticks or stones! (Make the items better for each tier level) I mean, I love dogs, and I'd love to add a ridiculously cute pink poodle to match my ridiculously cute pink decor, too. Oh, and maybe a MINX. (A pink one of course.)

3) Datable Olric - He's cute, he's young, he's, as far as I know, single, and he's not datable... Now tell me WHY. If you need another bachelorette to even out the playing field, how about we make Juniper mess up on a potion and accidentally make Dozy and Henrietta into humans...? Wait. That's BRILLIANT! Let's do that! (Can you imagine the look on Hayden or Juniper's face if you married the human version of their favorite pet? OH HO HO HO HO!) And then as for Olric's counterpart... What about Darcy? Sure, you'd only be able to access her on Saturdays, but who doesn't love a challenge? She's Hella cute, too, right?

4) SHEDS. I want a shed to put every single one of my bins into. The house works, but I'd much rather have space to decorate than hundreds of colorful boxes everywhere. (I have placed them in strategic places around my farm to avoid that now, but would very much like to have them all in one large space.) Through each and every farming game I have played, I have always had many, many sheds for these purposes - and what Sun Haven did where you can decorate the look of the shed was BRILLIANT! I loved having my kitchen set up as a bakery! (Also, can we decorate the outside design of the house? The inside of my house is suffocatingly cute. Now the outside has to be just as suffocatingly cute. SERIOUSLY!)

5) Mass-Number-Of Buttons - I tend to buy over 1000 seeds every first day of the month and I am going to develop early arthritis from continuously spam clicking. Can I have a button that allows me to simply select the number of the item I want? Also, another quality of life button that I've found in other games that I ABSOLUTELY appreciate is a like-with-like button for the chests. I would like to have a button where I can add every item from my inventory that is already in the chest TO the chest, so that I am not constantly looking for said item, or put said item in another chest when I already have a place for it. (And being able to label chests would be AWESOME, too!)

Okay... and now for the WANTS.

1) More. Pink. Furniture! That's right. You heard me. MORE CRINGE-WORTHY PINK FURNITURE THAT IS OH-SO SUFFOCATINGLY CUTE. Whoever designed the Season sets you get as rewards from completing the Flora collection in the museum? Absolute genius. I love them! I love the cake and coffee cup decor, but I'd very much like a tea set with a set of scones and other tea party items. (An Alice-in-Wonderland design set would be AMAZING)

2) Pigs. I didn't even know what a Calybara was until I started playing this game! (Real ones are seriously CUTE!) But where is the simple PIG? I need me a Wilbur and HAMLET! If you need a fifth small animal to match the number of large animals, might I suggest a peacock? I actually know someone who raised them and peacock -feather-designed items and clothing would be really pretty! Maybe even turkeys, if you want something simpler. (But I have yet to see a game that uses peacocks!)

3) Ponds. I loved the concept of ponds in Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley where you could breed fish to make more fish for dishes and gifts! Collecting different kinds of fish eggs and items was also a plus.

4) Greenhouses. Considering how much space I have on the farm and how much gold I'm dishing out currently, I don't find them to be a NEED, per se, but I do love having all of my favorite crops available year-round. And I would enjoy having a permanent place to plant my rarer seeds - like the ones I get from foraging lilacs, rosemary, sage, etc. (Indoor pots would do the job, too!) I can get them all from Balor occasionally, but where is the fun in that?

5) Finally, I'd like to see rival events. I haven't seen these since the earlier Harvest Moon games and it made the game more challenging, as well as more wholesome. If we don't see these rival events until after we've married, that's fine, but I like seeing the other villagers develop relationships and have families of their own. Wouldn't it be neat to see our future kiddo playing and making friends with the other kids? And I have totally shipped some of these characters already! Juniper and Valen: These two are so much fun to see talking on Friday nights and being total wine buddies! Celine and Hayden: Would make a very cute couple considering their common interests in farming. Reina and March: It would be cute to see how March handled Reina's sweet personality! I mean, if anyone could get through his tsundere behavior, wouldn't it be her? Adeline and Ryis: Town carpenter + Town Leader = Great collaboration! Eiland and Ryis: I dunno, they'd just look cute together. o-o Balor and... no one. Howl belongs to Sophie forever, lolz

And one suggestion... I completely thought Valen was a guy until I heard someone refer to her as a she/her... You know... I'm not saying I care too much if this is implemented, but if you wanted to be among the FIRST farming-dating sims that include a they/them marriageable character, Valen is a REALLY good choice, because I seriously couldn't figure out which gender she was until I was told, and I have seen commentary online where gay guys have been broken-hearted by the fact she's a she. And I, too, was broken-hearted when I saw she wasn't a guy - cause if she was, she'd be my type. No joke. So, make Valen into a they/them, and they could technically be whichever one the player wanted, yeah? ...And then replace the bachelorette space with Darcy... Seriously. DARCY IS ADORABLE. <3

[basillicus]

Excellent list that I agree with wholeheartedly!

[Biscuitgamer963]

To add to the idea of the pond, I think it could work as a toy for the small animals. Ducks of course would swim in it, and chickens and rabbits could wash off by it. More furniture in general (maybe a fall and winter set to complete the seasons) is always a win

[SimuLord]

My top five wishes that you didn't mention in the OP (absolutely co-sign on the variable day length slider/menu setting, I don't mind the frantic gameplay because I have a long history of challenge-running Stardew, but it'd be nice to slow it down for a more leisurely playthrough!)

1. FAST TRAVEL. Stardew has the minecarts, Coral Island has the warp posts around the island (and underwater), as I said in another post on this forum, how about Juniper magicking up some portals? As long as she doesn't turn into a deadpan evil AI dispensing neurotoxin during the final boss fight. Not THOSE kinds of portals!

Or a portal that leads to a long drop into a lake because she found out I cheated on her while I had amnesia. Quoth Geralt: "I hate portals."

But jokes aside, lore-appropriate fast travel please.

2. ROMANCEABLE MARKET MERCHANTS. Through a questline, you can convince one of the market merchants to settle down in town. Mostly because I want Darcy making me coffee every morning to start my player's day. Love ya Celine, but Darcy's my crush.

3. MINIGAMES AT FESTIVALS. One of those little things I love about the Stardew Valley Fair and the festivals in the My Time series and Coral Island, a break from the daily grind of the game to do something a little different. Is it really a cozy game without seasonal minigames?

4. UI QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS. A lot of other games in the genre do really smart things with their UI (Stardew's UI Info Suite and Lookup Anything mods are essential for that game, for example.) Hover over a crop square and it'll tell you how long until it's done growing, maybe even have a little water droplet on the popup if the crop's watered because it can be a bit hard to see in a crowded field. Right-click on an NPC or hover over them and press a button and bring up their character sheet. Dialogues like "If you want to make my mom happy, give her Green Tea, she loves it" and then the referenced NPC gets her character sheet updated as if you'd given her the gift. The more the game tells the player, the better.

5. And most importantly: TAKE YOUR TIME AND GET EARLY ACCESS RIGHT. Thinking specifically about Coral Island's dreadful disaster that was the 1.0 release last November when the game was blatantly unfinished. Don't rush. Do it right.

[morrigan]

i mostly agree with 99.99 percent of this but gotta admit OP's idea of transforming the NPC pets into dateable characters is kindaaaa weird?? there are a lot of other ways to even the playing field without involving animals ,,, like the saturday market vendors.

[TheDivineRose]

Double Yes on a day length slider option for people who want 40 minute days. Also a "like with like" sorting button would be a wonderful QoL improvement.

As an alternative to Stardew Valley sheds, might I recommend Garden Paws style sheds? It's sized and appears like a small woodshed, maybe taking up a 3x3 space. Opening it would just be like opening a chest, except like a massive chest with several pages of inventory. You wouldn't be able to walk into it, so it would avoid having to produce another loading screen just to access your multitude of chests. All of your stuff! In one convenient place! What a wonderful dream instead of trying to remember what I color coded my crops and mob drops to.

I have a post somewhere on here where I posted my fan theory about Caldarus becoming date-able and how that would work. I think it would be wonderful to get Caldarus, Olric, Merri, and Darcy added. Such sweeties. And the dragon makes for a good ace/non binary partner (Like Krobus!) for those of us who would appreciate that.

Pigs are a great idea, but what about goats as the small animal counterpart? Yeah they are a little big for a coop, but they could be mini goats. This is a fantasy world with dragons after all.

And 100000% yes. A Greenhouse please. I want to have a strawberry field year round <3