What I want to see or see more of, in future HM games

[Simfarmguru]

I know there was thread like this before and we've gone at length to discuss the negatives, but I'd like to put a more positive spin by compiling what I want in the future for HM.

Story-

More original stories, I like open ended to a degree, but we need a fresh perspective.  ToT and IoH both did good in this in my opinion, TToTT was also pretty good, and left the open ended aspect.  It would be nice to even bring back the grading aspect.  Why not set it for 5 years if 3 seems too short?

Money-

Try to keep money from being broken.  They've gotten WAY better about this, I'll say that.  It just makes the game less challenging to me at least, when there's some easy get-rich-quick technique I can exploit.

BETA-TEST-

I think we all concur that MORE beta-testing is needed by Natsume.  Seriously guys, after the disaster that was HM:DS, I'd THINK this would sink in, but no, you had to replace ToT for people.  Priority One Bugs should NEVER be part of a sold game.  Do you guys need volunteers or something?!

Spouses-

Back in HM64 and SNES, Ann collected eggs.  Karen collected them in HM64, although she broke some as well.  THIS made them DIFFERENT.  Not just before, but AFTER marriage as well!  Make the spouses DO something, other than sit there in the house twiddling their thumbs.  What if one potential spouse watered a few plants, another brushed some animals, or fed them?  This would add more the marriage system than looks, dialogue, and events.  They need new life.  TToTT's dating system helps, and I love that you have to befriend family members before marriage, but I want to see the spouses themselves grow a bit more.

Rivals-

And that leads me to rivals.  Rivals need a redo.  I LIKE that characters can fall for other characters, that's awesome.  But I think we could do with less of the rivalry now, seeing as how pairings have become worse with every game it seems.  Why not have some in game interaction and hints, without actual rivalry?!  In the first Rune Factory(yes, I'm using a spin-off as an example) Camus had a thing for Melody.  He stated this a couple of times.  BUT, they didn't marry, it was just there, it ADDED to story and characterization without feeling contrived.  Some rival pairings but not all, would be a good step in the right direction, if nothing else.

Characters-

Less flat characters.  Just that.  Characters should say more, do more, at different times.  The same phrase over and over does nothing for me.  Whining about the weather, commenting on the season, talking about a recent major event, can't they do more of these?  Also, more random events.  This was something nice in MFoMT, although you had to befriend everyone before most of the them occurred, the potential breathed life into everyone.  Also, stop recycling.  I love that the Harvest Goddess of ToT got a makeover.  She looks COMPLETELY different.  Why not get a WHOLE new cast, huh?

Community-

I miss the sense of community from HM64.  You actually get asked to help build a bridge.  If you talked to people and made friends, it counted at the end.  So did being a loner and ignoring everyone.  IoH went this way beautifully.  If you ignored people for too long, they disappeared!  You had to help rebuild the village.  People MATTERED.  TToTT did an even better job of making people matter without overwhelming you with new farming issues at the same time, a major issue of IoH.  In TToTT, you don't just chase a girl/guy.  You actually have to befriend the family!  What, you mean you can't IGNORE them, something you'd just about NEVER get away with in real life?!  Nope, you need to care about them too.  

Farming-

I think TToTT fixed most of my issues with farming.  You can refine grains, have different breeds of animals, you can age things.  I like these additions.  It also had "half-day" weather, which was a nice compromise from same all day and IoH's crazy system.  IoH's major problem was, it was too many good NEW ideas jammed into one new game.  And the weather didn't get explained well in it as well.  I also liked like no matter where you lived in TToTT, there was a small barn/field.  Nothing but a house and a field feels ridiculous.  Even a small barn is acceptable, no barn feels like you've been given some land and a house, NOT a farm.

All in all, I loved that TToTT fixed many things.  The flower system in particularly, was a relief.  No more hearts!  Yes, it's the same, but it's a different look and feel.  I like that.  I liked IoH, but again, bad weather system and too many changes.  What do the rest of you want to see?

[Juxapose]

I like to see all if not most of these things in a Harvest Moon game. But I would like to add one last thing:

NO MORE ANNOYING FEATURES!!!!!!!

Some things are nice, but others can be quite irritating. In many modern Harvest Moon games, they had some features that are really irritating, whether it's controls, features, or the hardware. Let me explain some:

Harvest Moon: Magical Melody
Overhead camera made me dizzy and got me lost very easily.
Carrying tools or crops made you walk very slow. So annoying.
Rucksack is tiny. When the rucksack is tinier than Harvest Moon: 64, you have a problem.
Tripping. Seriously, why? Waste of stamina for no reason.

Harvest Moon: DS
Grinding. Nobody wants to spend months grinding gold for one building.
Grinding again. Using tools over and over to level them up.

Harvest Moon: Animal Parade
Bad controls. Keep it like Tree of Tranquility will you?
Huge yet empty world. Why are villagers living so far apart? And takes forever to get anywhere.
Loading. Tree of Tranquility had it too, but Animal Parade is worse.

Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness
Light and water system. So broken, Sunshine islands did it way better.
Stylus only controls. Such a big mistake.

Harvest Moon: My Little Shop
Everything! Oh sweet mother of Jesus, everything was so annoying!

Harvest Moon: Hero of Leaf Valley
Loading. Every five friggen seconds the game has to load.

Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar
Spoiling. Seriously, why?
Trampling. I hate that you can accidentally trample your crops.
Jumping. There is no reason this feature should exist. This is Harvest Moon, not Mario Bros.
Watering twice a day. Just forces the game to be longer.

Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns
The request board. Holy **** is this annoying. If you made Rune Factory 2 and 3 with a fun and exciting request board, how did you mess this up?
Spoiling. Seriously, why?
Jumping. There is no reason this feature should exist. This is Harvest Moon, not Mario Bros.
Watering twice a day. Just forces the game to be longer.
Insect/fish species. It was okay in Grand Bazaar, but not for this game.
Unclear ingredients. Makes cooking a bit sloppy if you can't tell what the ingredients are.

[Butterscotch]

Aw, I like the jumping


What I'd like to see:

-improved dating; ToTT and ANB both added interesting features to the dating marriage part of Harvest Moon. In ToTT on certain days of the week you can go on dates and in ANB you can be official boyfriend/girlfriend with the marriage candidates. I'd like to see those two features combined. Like, you can date anyone until you get a boyfriend, then you can only date him. Or maybe you can't date at all until you're part of a couple. Either way, it's a feature I'd like to see 

-Gay/Lesbian marriage. The times are changing and Harvest Moon should keep pace. I've seen a lot of arguments that gay/lesbian marriage would raise the ESRB rating, which seems rather ridiculous to me. Gay/lesbian content does automatically mean mature.

-the light/water system from IoH. I know I'm in the minority here, but I really liked it. I don't want super realistic farming in Harvest Moon, but at the same time, the old "water your turnips every day" thing has gotten a bit old. The light/water system changed things up a bit. You had to pay attention to your crops and even then it was possible that you'd have bad luck and your turnips would die. IoH is a rather hard game and that struggle really endeared Chelsea to me. Running a successful farm and raising a family is so rewarding in that game.

-this is a really small thing, but I think it would be neat if when you have a crop/animal festival in a game if the participants were farmers from older games. 

[Juxapose]

Mar 19, 2013 17:22:10 GMT -5 Butterscotch said:

Aw, I like the jumping


What I'd like to see:

-improved dating; ToTT and ANB both added interesting features to the dating marriage part of Harvest Moon. In ToTT on certain days of the week you can go on dates and in ANB you can be official boyfriend/girlfriend with the marriage candidates. I'd like to see those two features combined. Like, you can date anyone until you get a boyfriend, then you can only date him. Or maybe you can't date at all until you're part of a couple. Either way, it's a feature I'd like to see 

-Gay/Lesbian marriage. The times are changing and Harvest Moon should keep pace. I've seen a lot of arguments that gay/lesbian marriage would raise the ESRB rating, which seems rather ridiculous to me. Gay/lesbian content does automatically mean mature.

-the light/water system from IoH. I know I'm in the minority here, but I really liked it. I don't want super realistic farming in Harvest Moon, but at the same time, the old "water your turnips every day" thing has gotten a bit old. The light/water system changed things up a bit. You had to pay attention to your crops and even then it was possible that you'd have bad luck and your turnips would die. IoH is a rather hard game and that struggle really endeared Chelsea to me. Running a successful farm and raising a family is so rewarding in that game.

-this is a really small thing, but I think it would be neat if when you have a crop/animal festival in a game if the participants were farmers from older games. 

I do get why some people like Jumping in the game. But the feature is pretty useless in a Harvest Moon game. When you add useless features, you take away time/resources from better features. Remember, to animate and program that jump, you need to pay an animator, artist, and a programmer a lot of money. That money should have went to making the characters more interesting, or something else that could make that Harvest Moon game better. (Or at least fine tune that damn request board.)

I have no issue with the light/water system. But Island of Happiness did it wrong. I liked the light/water system in Sunshine Islands. Island of Happiness became super frustrating when days gave no light when realistically it should. I understand the argument that watering crops everyday does get old. But sometimes adding a feature like that may break a game when not used properly. Once again using SFG's suggestion:

BETA-TEST-

I think we all concur that MORE beta-testing is needed by Natsume.  Seriously guys, after the disaster that was HM:DS, I'd THINK this would sink in, but no, you had to replace ToT for people.  Priority One Bugs should NEVER be part of a sold game.  Do you guys need volunteers or something?!

[Butterscotch]

I didn't realize that the light/water system was so different in SI. I didn't play SI too much.