How to easily and quickly implement HOTLY requested feature without breaking the game : Animal Husbandry

[ZanthystGamingYoutube]

Food for thought w the animal farming thing. I agree it would make hunger way to easy to manage unless balanced right. Solution make it like crops where you can do it but it takes a while to mature. For instance chickens IRL take 21 days to mature. Make it that and cap the number of chickens at like 3 per player or something. Also make it so they only lay 1 egg every 4 days or something and the player has to choose whether to mature it into a new chicken or use it for food. That way when they are capped waiting to mature the chickens provide a small benefit but not game breaking. Theres also a cost benefit then and a good gameplay mechanic decision to make whether you want to mature it or eat it. Make the egg maturing take 21 days to mature like in real life that way they arent constantly capped on chickens. You could do the same things with cows as they take about a month to mature for butcher. That way you can have the animal husbandry the players are REPEATEDLY asking for, have it be a compelling supplemental game mechanic, and not wreck the balance of food within the game. You could tweak those suggested numbers however you want but putting the cap constraint and maturity times would stop it from breaking the game and add a fun new thing to do. You could add more animals than that but I'd just start with 1 or 2 to see how it affect balance and tweak from there, plus then the lift is low from a programming side. A LOT of people love stuff like that (see popularity of star dew valley and a million other games like it). Adding something like this to your already amazing game could definitely increase your audience appeal and increase game sales which means more funding for more development. Win win.

[Riamus]

They have repeatedly stated they will not add animal husbandry to this game.  Perhaps in the next game.

 

Honestly, it isn't needed.  If you make it take forever to do, everyone will just adjust the timer in the XML and have it complete within a short time and you're now completely unbalanced with food even more so than you already are.  Food is very easy and extra ways of getting food aren't needed.  It's "fun", but it isn't needed.  There are already mods that offer this if you want to do it.

 

And as far as people liking things like Stardew Valley.... that doesn't mean anything.  I would guess that most of the people who play that have no interest in playing this, even if you had animal husbandry as an option.  Yes, people like that kind of thing.  And there are many others who hate that kind of thing.  You have many different types of players who are interested in different types of games.  Adding something that works in one genre to another genre, or even another game in the same genre, isn't always a good thing.  Games are meant to be different and that's a good thing.