Community center path feel like a bad choice.

[meiam]

I just finished the finished the community center line and I get what they're trying to do, but it feel like a bad ending (both from story and gameplay point of view).

A bunch of people lost their jobs (literally the only job in the village outside of farmer and mayor). Plenty of villager comment on how they have to go to Jojo because they can't afford the price at Pierre (with plenty of them presumably having pony up the 5000G for Jojo which now was just wasted money), but now their forced to go to Pierre, so presumably they'll have to cut somewhere else. They act like the community center going in disrepair was Jojo fault, but how does that even work "well honey I was going to go to community college for pottery class but instead I think I'll go to Jojo for... reason"?

From a gameplay point of view, Jojo is just a better shop, it doesn't close on wed and its open to 9, which is way better than Pierre.

The game throw a big "congratulation, you've save the town!" but I sure don't feel like it. Maybe if the community center would turn into a market or something it would work from both a story and gameplay point of view.

[Stardustfire]

never seen any NPC saying he got the Joja Membership, only Shane has one negative sentence about loosing his job at joja, and even this is gone when you worked up his friendship to blue chicken.
also its ever funny how joja says to have cheaper prices when you need to pay more for seeds than at pierce for example.

[titanopteryx]

With joja, I don't know about everyone else, but sometimes I forgot to buy seeds until after Pierre was closed but Joja was open.

[estehmanis]

Befriend the village more, like Op said, shane sobered up and got to have his own business which makes him a better caretaker for jas. And yeah, stuff are actually cheaper at pierre.

But on some note I agree with you, CC doesn't feel worth it bcs it doesn't really feel used by the community after all the hardwork we've been through to build it. On certain day some npcs go there alone, but that's about it, it felt dead. And it has no gameplay use whatsoever.

Mod like SVE does a good job on sprucing up CC a bit, they have this CC day, so on that day everybody gather up and socialize and stuff. Although I think it's best if there's a gameplay change that make use of CC more.

But this is me asking too much I guess, Ape has been awesome. If there's mod for it, it would be cool.

Or Dlc, honestly I'd pay.

[estehmanis]

İlk olarak titanopteryx tarafından gönderildi:

With joja, I don't know about everyone else, but sometimes I forgot to buy seeds until after Pierre was closed but Joja was open.

lol me too. But they try to promote small local shop, so that's the charm I guess...or downside.

[meiam]

There's a few other people working at Jojo, maybe they don't live in stardew valley, but they clearly were working there so they all lost their jobs.

Also seeds are more expensive at Jojo, but presumably regular stuff that you can't buy are cheaper (Jojo has a bunch of shelves, they can't all be for seed). Plenty of NPC mention the cheaper price at Jojo. As for memberships, plenty of them must have brought them since the Jojo manager says he only need to sell one more to make bank, he couldn't be saying that if he hadn't sold a bunch beforehand.

[funewchie]

İlk olarak estehmanis tarafından gönderildi:

Befriend the village more, like Op said, shane sobered up and got to have his own business which makes him a better caretaker for jas. And yeah, stuff are actually cheaper at pierre.

But on some note I agree with you, CC doesn't feel worth it bcs it doesn't really feel used by the community after all the hardwork we've been through to build it. On certain day some npcs go there alone, but that's about it, it felt dead. And it has no gameplay use whatsoever.

Mod like SVE does a good job on sprucing up CC a bit, they have this CC day, so on that day everybody gather up and socialize and stuff. Although I think it's best if there's a gameplay change that make use of CC more.

But this is me asking too much I guess, Ape has been awesome. If there's mod for it, it would be cool.

Or Dlc, honestly I'd pay.

To be fair, there's a lot of things fiction doesn't show, just cause it's not feasible.
(Like the bathroom on the Enterprise. Kirk obviously has to take a leak now and then, but that's a background detail that's not important to us.
Likewise, surely the carpets/floors have to be vaccummed and cleaned, but that's not relevant to us, so it stays in the background out of sight.
(Not that seeing Scotty have to fix the plumbing wouldn't be amusing))

I mean, in Stardew Valley, no one visits Clint's forge (besides Lewis collecting taxes), yet clearly he is able to stay in business despite having no customers besides us.
Chances are the villagers do visit from time to time, for him to fix their tools and such, but we don't see it.

A lot of TV shows and such mainly focus on the main characters and what they do, even though there's obviously supposed to be lots more, likely hundreds of people living in the village or town.
Likewise, Pelican Town likely has more residents than the 5 or so families living there. But that's not feasible to implement, so the rest remain hidden and irrelevant.

[ajfusch]

Yeah, from a regular person's point of view Joja closing is definitely a bad thing.

Who can afford Pierre's prices? Villagers complain about that all the time.
Strangely that isn't reflected in the prices you have to pay as the main char, even if the npcs mention it repeatedly. A big supermarket being more expensive than that little mom and pop store? It's unrealistic and clashing with npc dialogue.

Also the loss of jobs ... with Joja closed Shane gets drunk out in the pub early afternoon instead of in the evenings. Great. (It's not as if after the cutscenes that tell you he's on the way to be better it looks like he's actually getting better. His dialogue and even his room if you marry him imply he's still got this problem).

About the community center: I don't quite get what it's for, really. They are a very active and close-knit community, they do festivals twice each season and have their dates for whatever with each other, their houses are open to everyone they have a few hearts with, so basically to good acquaintences, not to mention friends, all the (day)time.

So why do they need an extra building to hang out with each other?

[funewchie]

İlk olarak ajfusch tarafından gönderildi:

About the community center: I don't quite get what it's for, really. They are a very active and close-knit community, they do festivals twice each season and have their dates for whatever with each other, their houses are open to everyone they have a few hearts with, so basically to good acquaintences, not to mention friends, all the (day)time.

So why do they need an extra building to hang out with each other?

Likely the same thing most people use community centers for: gatherings, events and parties.

Normally, they probably would use the community center for festivals and events.

Except that'd be hard to implement in-game, as the center is dilapidated at first (or replaced with a warehouse), and it'd be a quite a headache trying to work out how to program the game to figure out where the events are being held.

(Likely this is also why Penny doesn't use the Community Center to teach the kids, even though it has a good room for children to do school arts and crafts, and a cafeteria. )

[estehmanis]

İlk olarak funewchie tarafından gönderildi:

To be fair, there's a lot of things fiction doesn't show, just cause it's not feasible.
(Like the bathroom on the Enterprise. Kirk obviously has to take a leak now and then, but that's a background detail that's not important to us.
Likewise, surely the carpets/floors have to be vaccummed and cleaned, but that's not relevant to us, so it stays in the background out of sight.
(Not that seeing Scotty have to fix the plumbing wouldn't be amusing))

Dude, we figured as much lol.

I'm just saying CC route has some problem in the payoff stage, in terms of gameplay and story, there's not much difference. Since it's basically the theme of the game and Joja basically pictured the 'villain' it's understandable that some player feel the payoff's rather underwhelming considering the effort they put. And this is coming from player who always go the CC route.

There's still stuff you could do to reward the player emotionally for choices they make while still providing more or less the same benefit.

Well, I get that it's pretty hard for ape to do since its a solo project, but the problem is still valid nonetheless. Not that I demand anything, mind you. There's still mods and stuff, and I'd rather Ape do what he wants, be it future content or new game, since he had the time and money now.

[Pixel Peeper]

Oddly enough, Joja has worse prices. You have to buy an expensive (5,000g) membership to bring the prices down to Pierre's. It seems there are 50% off coupons that get distributed sometimes (which explains why villagers would shop there) but the player character never gets any.

The Community Centre route makes no sense simply because the villagers don't want a Community Centre (they had one and stopped using it on their own). We're expected to believe that the player character, who just got out of an unrewarding job, would pick up right where they left off, give up their newfound freedom and start doing a bunch of crazy chores that make restoring the town ten times harder than it should be.

[Sol]

This is almost as bad as FABLE, where the bad choice is easier, gives an easier time, but the "good" choice's reward is "making you feel better".

Nobody pays attention to Community Center - when it's built, it will just overgrow again and become a Joja Warehouse anyway because only one guy in town (me) cares about it.

Also, the player character - who just got out of a dead-end Joja Job, now has an opportunity to buy in on the other side as a supplier, that's like if you work at Wal-Mart then invent something and they ask you if you'd like to pay 5k for a distribution contract to sell your crap on their shelves - you'd make a LOT more money than dead-ending a 9-5 for them.

[biochimera]

Tbf that's something that pops up a lot. Like going through Ginger Island, so now I also own a smaller farm on the island now too? How is that legal, finders keepers? Qi being generous for jumping through more hoops? Not to mention the resort. Lewis says it's going to bring in money (so more golden statues for him), but once again who owns it? The town? Why not have a villager or two spawn to become caretakers, instead of Gus occasionally caring for it?

Or Pam driving the bus. Pam. Seriously. Why not alternate with Shane while you're at it. Or Sandy saying she nearly went out of business because of the bus from Pelican Town breaking down, it's a two-way road from the looks of it, so why not business from Zuzu city, especially if you have a freaking casino out back?

So TLDR there's a lot of weird things that don't really make sense in Stardew Valley. Just smile and nod.