Questions about Pioneers of Olive Town (and maybe about my SoS playstyle)

[funewchie]

Since there's no forum for it, I figured I'd ask here.

One of my biggest gripes in recent Story of Seasons is that they tend to hold you back.
Such as in Trio of Towns, I've only just started Winter of year 1, and it took forever.

I have 2 cows, a sheep, a llama, a rabbit, 3 chickens, and a quail. Plus 4 pets at 3 hearts.
Yet, it feels like it takes me forever just to get better things. So many thing I'm locked out of, just because I don't have Suffolk Wool+, Green Llama Wool+, or Flax Thread, for example.
Can't upgrade my tools because I'm stuck at the RNG's mercy.
Or can't find black lumber/stone.
Even upgrading to a bigger barn took forever.

Can't get a Dye pot because I lack ingredients.
Takes forever to earn a profit, etc.

It feel like the game just drags.

Even this game feels a bit like it drags, such as with upgrading tools. Or having stamina to do things like mine (I still can't get past floor 6, because my guy is wiped out by the time he gets there).

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So I'm curious, does Pioneers of Olive Town fix any of these drag issues?
Or is it even slower paced?

(Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they need to slow down the power gamers that can just plow through the whole game in one afternoon.
But, I'm not one of those players)

[Algester]

have you tried playing stardew valley? PoOT is basically that in 3D need to turn ore into ingot well spam the crafters 1 crafter 1 item
(but I have heard that they are going to change this in part of balance patches so your farm won't look like an industrial factory)

heck I would say 3oT is faster paced than its predecessor release... want to make clothes well jee you go from Wool->yarn->dye->cloth bolt->textile (and make sure you set aside the bolts of cloth for you so you can make stuff and town requests because thats literally your goal)
and is even worst when it came to mining you only have 1 node for the entire town, and you can freely start consuming the content by year 3-4 if you want to marry Elise -_-
yes the predecessor series is worst at it as it forces you to keep 1 pair of each animals 1 for winning festivals and 1 for general stuff. ohh and grazing well gee ANB does it better because in the SoS you literally go "AFK" to min max your grazing

and you can't downgrade your wool if you got a + its only going to craft + items

[funewchie]

Originally posted by Algester:

have you tried playing stardew valley? PoOT is basically that in 3D need to turn ore into ingot well spam the crafters 1 crafter 1 item
(but I have heard that they are going to change this in part of balance patches so your farm won't look like an industrial factory)

heck I would say 3oT is faster paced than its predecessor release... want to make clothes well jee you go from Wool->yarn->dye->cloth bolt->textile (and make sure you set aside the bolts of cloth for you so you can make stuff and town requests because thats literally your goal)
and is even worst when it came to mining you only have 1 node for the entire town, and you can freely start consuming the content by year 3-4 if you want to marry Elise -_-
yes the predecessor series is worst at it as it forces you to keep 1 pair of each animals 1 for winning festivals and 1 for general stuff. ohh and grazing well gee ANB does it better because in the SoS you literally go "AFK" to min max your grazing

and you can't downgrade your wool if you got a + its only going to craft + items

Yeah, I own Stardew Valley.
Even have it modded with things like Automate, so I just leave stuff in chests, and they'll auto-feed into makers, and then the finished product moves back into the chest.
So each morning, I just have to fill the chest with goods, and pick up the processed stuff. Makes it a lot more streamlined and quick.

(Same with ingots. Keep a ton of coal in the chest. Then, just dump my haul of ores in the chest, too. And whenever I need metal ingots, just go to the chest and collect them.
(I even later hooked up a couple kilns, so if I need coal, I can dump some excess lumber in the chest, and it'll take care of itself))
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I actually didn't get too far in SoS. I think barely Summer of Year 1.
Was SoS the one with the idiotic "take animals to a distant farm for grazing, but you have nothing to do but stand around" feature?
I can't remember if that's SoS or ANB that did that.

ANB, I did get into Year 2. What soured me on it was the constant need for the Gardening Square inspection. It has to be always different, and must follow an intricate pattern they never teach you (you just have to read their minds)? No thanks.

Plus, having no way to know what on earth I'd planted doesn't help, either.
Sorry, Iroha. Maybe one day I'll be dedicated enough to progress enough for the marriage.
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With Trio of Towns, it just feel like the repetition hits after a while. (I know this genre has that issue, but it usually takes a long time)
Most stuff I can get is locked behind things I can't get for years, or rare items. (At least Stardew only had a few things, like the red cabbage, but was still manageable)
No easy way to make decent money.

I'm just playing and wondering "Well... when does my guy finally start hitting his stride?"

[Algester]

In ANB you can send your animals to graze untended and they will be brought back to your barns automatically, in SoS you have to be in the Safari along with the animals (this is also where the only mining node in the town resides in) which you can't even unlock till you unlock Agate in Summer. And then there's upgrading the Safari which means more wood and stone god please dont remind me... SoS could have been good, Raeger is a hottie (no surprise why he becomes a DLC marriage candidate in PoOT)... but god the mechanics were just poorly excecuted

In 3oT I find the repetition much more engaging in SoS it was more of a chore at least in 3oT you can easily spend time and bond with the town by eating, this wasnt an option in SoS as wasting time would be counter productive when you can have to AFK with your animals grazing.... the more bummer aspect is how some of the recipes are locked behind RNG with the festivals in 3oT I think the recipes takes priority.

And once you increase the town ranks in 3oT and you unlock pets go for the herding trait as priority as they will automatically make your animals graze with in said aloted farm lot (you have 3-4? Farm lots total).

But again in PoOT you have to manually take all your items from the crafters so basically again vanilla SV.

you basically take SoS1 mechanics and then add stardew valley crafting into it and then decorating it like Animal Crossing (dumbed down crafting but relies on the PC to do EVERYTHING) at least the farm lot isnt detached from your house unlike the first SoS title which is like 2-3 screens away.

I got as far as year 2 in 3oT but since I played it through an emulator it wasnt the best experience... but I have yet to revisit it, if the emulation has been made better since I was experiencing crashes

[funewchie]

Originally posted by Algester:

In ANB you can send your animals to graze untended and they will be brought back to your barns automatically, ...
SoS could have been good, Raeger is a hottie (no surprise why he becomes a DLC marriage candidate in PoOT)... but god the mechanics were just poorly excecuted

In 3oT I find the repetition much more engaging in SoS it was more of a chore at least in 3oT you can easily spend time and bond with the town by eating,

And once you increase the town ranks in 3oT and you unlock pets go for the herding trait as priority as they will automatically make your animals graze with in said aloted farm lot (you have 3-4? Farm lots total).

But again in PoOT you have to manually take all your items from the crafters so basically again vanilla SV.

you basically take SoS1 mechanics and then add stardew valley crafting into it and then decorating it like Animal Crossing (dumbed down crafting but relies on the PC to do EVERYTHING) at least the farm lot isnt detached from your house unlike the first SoS title which is like 2-3 screens away.

I got as far as year 2 in 3oT but since I played it through an emulator it wasnt the best experience... but I have yet to revisit it, if the emulation has been made better since I was experiencing crashes

Well, I took the plunge, and got SoS:PoOT (as Nintendo had it on sale, and $48 for the game+season pass was too good to pass up).

So far, I like the main character's designs, the graphics seem very nice, the controls are pretty good, too.
I love the toolbox storage thing they added.
(Where you can stash your tools away when you need to free up space in your hotbar/backpack, but the tools are still within reach at all times)

Thus far it seems nice. Even the beginning portion doesn't seem like a drag, like often happens. They aren't holding my hand (in the sense of "Oh, you can't mine until Spring 26 Year 1, because of reasons").
On Day 2, the mayor gave me all my tools, and I could chops trees, smash rocks, and mine as soon as I wanted (taking stamina into account, and it's really generous).

Only thing I don't have is a storage cabinet to store things I collect, but that's fair.
And on Day 3, the mayor already tells me what I need to do for that, hinting that's the next step.
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As for your Trio of Towns experience, I don't know.
I've been playing on actual hardware.

Stardew has a really good crafting system, so that's a complement if PoOT is like it.
(I just hate when games with crafting require ultra-rare material, hard-to-find material, or material hidden behind RNG.
...One reason Nusakana is one of my favorite RPGs. In that game, they're extremely generous with item drops, battles go pretty quick so monster item farming works great, and at least two party members have stackable passive abilities that seriously increase drop rates)

I use herding pets in Trio of Towns, and they work fine.
My main gripe with them is trying to get my livestock to eat the special spicy fodder in their trays.
If the pets herd them outside before they can eat, they'll just eat outdoor grass, which doesn't do anything for me (other than saving me money on feed, I guess).

I can't tell if the livestock are actually eating the spicy fodder or not. If not, then it's gonna take even longer to get their coats leveled up.

[Algester]

for the barns I suggest that you only use the one slot barns and coop for your animals you want to "win" and put them in your main farm screen (screen 1) that way you can easily control what they eat

[funewchie]

Thanks for the tips in Trio. I may try that.
(Your tip works fine, but I'd have to manually herd the animals to prevent their eating the spicy fodder getting messed up by pet herding)

I just wish Marvelous had accounted for the feeding bins when they implemented the pet herding system.
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As for Pioneer... wow, it's actually pretty good!

I'm actually liking it, it's not too complex, they're not trying to slow me down (by holding my hand).
I can progress at my own pace.

By mid-Spring, all of my tools are at Lv 1 (Iron), I got the first bridge repaired, and now have access to Silver, so it won't be too long until I start getting Lv 2 tools.
The main bottleneck currently is money, which is perfect. That should be the bottleneck in these games, not a calendar.

I love the skill system (kinda like a smaller-scale version of Rune Factory's).
I love that leveling up your skills gives bonuses to that job. So leveling up Woodcutting not only makes it take less stamina and do the job faster, but even gives you extra lumber for each tree you cut.

I hope it keeps this up, cause I'm really liking PoOT.
(Yeah, the makers are one-at-a-time instead of stacking, but still, that's no different than Stardew Valley's makers. I just line up a row of them, set my materials to process, and be on my way.)