[06.12.26] festival foods, tea and bills

[polkacat99]

Dear kjun,

I want to preface by saying I am absolutely stoked! I cant wait for next week. Ive been waiting a long time for this, thank you

I really love this week’s brainstorm update and you added a lot of stuff that will 100% make my life easier. I also love all the interactions for the babies, although the baby shaking the fridge and breaking it is a bit silly since babies that small cant realistically break a fridge. Maybe if the baby were to take food out of the fridge and throw it around?

Now, for future updates, I do have a few suggestions:

For special festival foods, random change for a zoi to learn to cook them with a high enough skill level after eating to bring some gameplay mechanics into the game. It’s a shame they’re only available during the festival, but i also love the exclusivity behind them, so this should be a nice balance.

And tea. I would like another type of kettle as well as more teas and gameplay surrounding it like making your own tea and even using crops for tea. Basically, the coffee skill but for tea would be very much appreciated . And also the ability for multiple zois to use the same kettle at once. I want a zoi to pour several cups at once and other zois to be able to come ane grab it at the same time and sit around the table and be able to drink it. Will definitely add a cozy charm to the game

Also, overhaul of the conversation system. Right now it feels too “meh” since it takes a while to sort through menus. I love that some options pop up at the top when a zoi gets in certain mod, so expanding this system to other conversation options that basically make options more likely to be at the front depending on mood, context, location, relationship levels, ect would be superb and make it feel much less overwhelming and more enjoyable. Basically, make the game collaborate with the players

Also, the ability for teen and older zois to carry kids on their shoulders since in real life, you will often see dads carrying their kids on their shoulders. EXTRA bonus points if you extend it to adults to carry other and allow piggyback rides since it’s such an integral part of romance literature (appears in a LOT of romance manwhas) and will give storytellers even more tools. And of course, allow kids to receive piggyback rides as well please

And also, increase lot prices since realistically, owning a lot downtown is a LOT more expensive than a measly 30k or so meow. In order for players to be able to afford the house at the beginning, they could either rely on the morgage OR be able to rent those lots. Renting differs in a way that upon moving, you’ll only be able to get meow from sales on furniture as opposed to the whole property. It’ll give players who want to do a low income playthrough more of a challenge, and players who made it big to feel accomplished.

A big thing with life sims is that you end up accumulating huge amounts of wealth with no ability to spend it, so such a system should give players something they can actually work towards.

Likewise, once tbe travelling system is more fleshed out, it should cost a decent amount of meow to travel (since plane tickets usually cost lot) and the prices will depends where you’re travelling from and to. And of course the ability to purchase vacation homes.

You can take this EVEN further and allow players to buy multiple lots and rent them out and even being able to buy every single community lot in the city. Buying a community lot would generate weekly income as well as give players the ability to edit them (so, kind of like becoming investors). Community lots should operate on a tier system where increasing the tier increases the weekly income. Tiers can be increased by increasing the lot value by installing new developments on them. Like, when the hotels finally come, this will let players be able to invest in hotels and design them however they want, which is a dream for a lot of life sim players and a pretty popular request in the broader community. It also gives us the ability to become evil overlords that control the city ane wreake absolute HAVOC on the game or, you know, become the nice old zoi that improves the city, but who wants that ()

And finally, the bills. Currently, they feel rather forgiving, so I’d like them harder. Of course, some players like easier gameplay, so a slider in settings that decides financial difficulty should be perfect. You could even take it a step further and make it so that the slider not only affects the bills, but also all the furniture prices. Shouldn’t be too hard to implement if the slider affects the percentage of the pricing. So if a couch costs 300 meow and you drag the slider 9 points, the couch becomes 90% more expensive and the price now is 570 meow. It will also give furniture stores actual gameplay and allow us to get furniture morgages (yup, it’s a thing!) to give us a reason to use them.

A system like this should work VERY very nicely with the crime gameplay and add a lot more to the immersion. Bonus points if you introduce low income neighborhoods where the houses are cheaper but the chance of break ins are much higher. And it should also look run-down

Rags to riches challenge is a HUGE thing in the life sim community, so building the game in mind to accommodate the rags to riches challenge model would give players a lot more playtime. When it comes to casual games, it’s important to keep a nice balance between gameplay and grinding for more enjoyability. And of course, challenge. Easy gameplay doesnt keep the older players hooked for too long.

Anyways, these were my thoughts for this week and I am absolutely stoked for next week, so thank you once again

[Carnel]

@polkacat99

Also, the dialog system needs to be reworked. Right now it feels too “meh” because it requires a lot of time sorting through menus.

This is what I really want to highlight! I completely agree that this is absolutely necessary!

Right now we’re forced to scroll through menus endlessly — both during conversations and when interacting with our own pets. For example, to find a book I want to read, I have to go through each section — general, children’s, thematic — and then additionally scroll through lists of all the books within them, because there are so many and they don’t all fit in the short menu.

Remember how the Start menu worked in older versions of Windows — like Windows 98. There, all the lists were dropdown menus and showed all items at once. We could do something similar here, where long items would just expand into multiple columns — 2 or even 3. In any case, this would make it much faster to see whether the option we need is in that section, or if we need to keep looking. Right now we’re stuck scrolling through the list over and over again, never seeing its full contents.

And of course, the relevant items — actions for current desires, conversations on important topics, books needed for homework, etc. — should be displayed in priority order at the upper levels

Let me remind those who might have forgotten what this looked like in Windows. No truncated lists, everything is visible at once (unless, of course, the menu was so packed that it didn’t fit the full screen height — then scrolling would appear there too. But as I said, we could split very long lists into multiple columns). Of course, this isn’t meant to be a literal interpretation, just showing the principle: all the contents of each category are visible right away

[Minthyuyu]

I REALLY love the tea skill idea. Maybe even combine it with gardening so we can grow our own tea herbs!

[anibea528]

I like the ideas about dishes. I was thinking myself that it would be great to have the ability to learn how to cook festival dishes. Plus, each city really reflects its own culinary culture and traditions. So it would be cool to make it so that you could only learn to cook certain dishes by leveling up your skill and trying them in another city. This would be a great motivator to explore new places, try street food, and travel! Maybe in each city the available dishes for cooking could be unique, meaning if Zoe lives in Downe, she knows how to cook tokpoki, bibimbap and other Korean dishes at a basic level. But residents of Bliss Bay know how to cook pancakes, toast, burgers, etc. (I don’t know if this is technically possible). Then we could open restaurants with exotic cuisine!\n\nAs for the money, I’m not sure. I tried to play honestly, took out a loan for an apartment and couldn’t even make progress on the payments. The debts passed on to my children. They worked and ran businesses and it didn’t help them save money at all. On one hand, everyone talks about how easy the system is, but on the other hand, working and advancing your career, you can’t pay off debts for your entire life. If you’re going to make the economy more realistic, it’s worth considering that while playing, a player should still be earning something and making progress. If you’re playing without cheats, there should be ways to advance. Maybe not in one generation, but still.