Community center versus Joja

[Jardenon]

Is there any special reason to do the community center? cause it seems to me like a giant overly complicated pain to gather all those items.

[Alucard †]

No not really from the looks of it its more of a moral choice rather than anything substantial.

[Jardenon]

Joja it is.

[poppetshadow]

It's really all in how you want to play the game. I've done both, but the Joja route was really dull to me since I just fished my way to the opening. I prefer the challenge of the bundles, vs just making money.

[drakelgin]

You get certain rewards and things for completing the bundles in the community center. Plus there is more late-game content surrounding the joja building if you choose to restore the community center. In my personal opinion it is much, much more rewarding to restore the community center than just buying your way through joja. Plus the warehouse that replaces the community center is ugly.

[drakelgin]

It is all in "how you want to play the game" but doing the community center bundles also just helps you level up your skills and lets you really take your time enjoying the game thoroughly. But I guess its all in your perspective

[drakelgin]

Plus, if you dive into the character story perspective regarding this issue, you left Joja because you yearned for something better and more fulfilling. In my opinion, giving money to Joja just so they can buy out the building from Mayor Lewis and turn it into a storage building is just kind of sad and doesn't really make sense with your characters whole purpose of coming to Stardew Valley in the first place.

[Alucard †]

Originally posted by CAMEROOON_(~o~):

Plus, if you dive into the character story perspective regarding this issue, you left Joja because you yearned for something better and more fulfilling. In my opinion, giving money to Joja just so they can buy out the building from Mayor Lewis and turn it into a storage building is just kind of sad and doesn't really make sense with your characters whole purpose of coming to Stardew Valley in the first place.

Community center warehouse becomes Movie Theater later in Joja route from what i seen. So it's not all bad. It's more convinient location for the Theater too.

[NBOX21]

It's kind of funny how the Joja path kinda feels like what many other corporations would do in real life - take your money for signing up, then even more money to get everything done in town. It's quicker and requires less effort from you, but you feel a bit of guilt for sort of cheating your way through by spending a lot of money on them. But at least you have full access to everything in the game with minimal effort.

Whereas the Community Centre path is not only cheaper, but more satisfying in the end since while it does require more effort from you, you can at least feel good for not rewarding companies that offer the easy way out of everything due to only being in it for the money. I mean, Joja obviously doesn't care for their employees if the intro is anything to go by. The community, however, is there to look after each other one way or another.

If the Joja path reminds me of how most AAA games are designed nowadays, more specifically in the "pay to win" kind of way if you know what I mean, the Community Centre path reminds me a lot of many indie developed games that come out nowadays, especially this one.

[Alucard †]

However ... Pierre gains from community way and he is like all the greed of evil corporations condensed into one person.

[drakelgin]

Originally posted by ⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟:

However ... Pierre gains from community way and he is like all the greed of evil corporations condensed into one person.

Your just generalizing it though. Pierre, sure, is profiting off of the community and you. BUT how is that any worse than Joja? Its not. Joja is significantly worse because its a corporate company franchise. They don't care for their employees, and they don't care about you. But Pierre on the other hand, works for himself. He doesn't have any employees, and he keeps the community and his family happy and healthy. There is no character in the game that complains that Pierre is "evil" or "greedy." If you're going off of your logic, we should all boycott small businesses IRL because they are "the most evil entities to ever walk the earth."

[Alucard †]

Joja doesn't buy your hard earned gold quality crops for paltry sum just to try to sell them for small fortune.

Also my comment wasn't meant to be taken this seriously. And you need to know the difference between a video game and real life too.

Pierre being more evil than Joja has been somewhat of a running joke among SDV community.

[drakelgin]

Originally posted by ⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟:

Joja doesn't buy your hard earned gold quality crops for paltry sum just to try to sell them for small fortune.

Also my comment wasn't meant to be taken this seriously. And you need to know the difference between a video game and real life too.

Pierre being more evil than Joja has been somewhat of a running joke among SDV community.

I know the difference between a videogame and real life lol. It's just a point I made because ConcernedApe has talked about the real life inspiration taken from big greedy corporations and their effects on small communities. Also, of course Joja doesn't buy your crops. As a large corporation, they would have farms themselves that they buy produce from or pay to grow their crops for them. The quality probably wouldn't be as good as the crop you produce on your farm in game. Joja would never pay you Pierre's price because their crop is cheaper to buy and produce. It's just another way to make money during the day instead of waiting till the end of the day for the shipping container.

If anything, the only other "villain" in the game is Mayor Lewis, who seems to have some interesting priorities as mayor. The tax he talks about with local businesses is probably significantly larger than it needs to be, considering he can have a pure gold statue made of himself. The community center is in shambles when you begin the game, there's no public transit in Stardew (beginning game) because I guess its just "not in the budget" or something. The shore line surrounding the city is covered in trash. If anything, Pierre and the other villagers are just victims of a corrupt governmental body.

[Alucard †]

Originally posted by CAMEROOON_(~o~):

There is no character in the game that complains that Pierre is "evil" or "greedy."

Technically thats actually not true.

Gus calls out Pierre about his outrageous prices. And several of the npcs during the event get offended by his greed aswell.

And your player character has dialogue option to flatout call him out that he should be less greedy.

Plus Pierres dream is to open more shops and just profit. He openly says that. After Joja is gone he basically gains monopoly people have to shop in his store and some npcs i recall saying they liked shopping at joja.

Now you understand why Pierre being more or as greedy as Joja became a running joke among Stardew community?

Keyword : joke

[drakelgin]

Originally posted by ⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟:

Originally posted by CAMEROOON_(~o~):

There is no character in the game that complains that Pierre is "evil" or "greedy."

Technically thats actually not true.

Gus calls out Pierre about his outrageous prices. And several of the npcs during the event get offended by his greed aswell.

And your player character has dialogue option to flatout call him out that he should be less greedy.

Plus Pierres dream is to open more shops and just profit. He openly says that. After Joja is gone he basically gains monopoly people have to shop in his store and some npcs i recall saying they liked shopping at joja.

Now you understand why Pierre being more greedy as Joja became a running joke among Stardew community?

Of course Pierre's prices are higher. He is a locally owned business. They're paying for convenience. Joja, on the other hand, like I said before, is a large enough company that they can have lower prices so that they can monopolize and put stores in as many communities as they want. The villagers just don't understand economics I guess. And who is GUS of all people to talk. the prices he charges for food at the saloon are INSANE. Of course the npcs like shopping at Joja, theyre given coupons in that one cutscene by Morris who wants to run Pierre out of town.

[NBOX21]

Originally posted by ⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟:

Plus Pierres dream is to open more shops and just profit. He openly says that. After Joja is gone he basically gains monopoly people have to shop in his store and some npcs i recall saying they liked shopping at joja.

The plus side to all of this, however, is that Pierre's produce is of much higher quality compared to that of Joja's far cheaper stock. This is mentioned by various NPCs after finishing the CC route. They may miss the lower prices, but at least appreciate the higher quality produce they get from Pierre.

Originally posted by CAMEROOON_(~o~):

Of course the npcs like shopping at Joja, theyre given coupons in that one cutscene by Morris who wants to run Pierre out of town.

I guess that would make the villagers somewhat greedy as well since they value cheap stuff and their own money more than they do the quality of their products and the local businesses run by the community. It's so easy for humans in general to fall for such tricks, which also happens a lot in the real world BTW.

Originally posted by CAMEROOON_(~o~):

Originally posted by ⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟:

However ... Pierre gains from community way and he is like all the greed of evil corporations condensed into one person.

Your just generalizing it though. Pierre, sure, is profiting off of the community and you. BUT how is that any worse than Joja? Its not. Joja is significantly worse because its a corporate company franchise. They don't care for their employees, and they don't care about you. But Pierre on the other hand, works for himself. He doesn't have any employees, and he keeps the community and his family happy and healthy.

It's just like I said earlier - small indie studio that cares about their work and the people that appreciate what they do vs the big AAA company that only cares about the money with no regard for the end product and only seeing their customers as numbers. Translate that into the world of Stardew Valley and we have Joja that is essentially the big AAA company as well as Pierre who may as well be the smaller indie studio.

Pierre at least cares about the community - Joja does not.

ConcernedApe has talked about the real life inspiration taken from big greedy corporations and their effects on small communities.

Interesting...