heya there, first of things, i love Fostoria and Stoffton — then, second, is there a plan to make a discord server by any chance? thirdly, that's that honestly, the only thing i was hoping to see more is some news and or information for the future of the expansions ^^
Love the mod but it would be great to see people from Stoffton and Fostoria coming into town more!! Maybe use the Saloon Speakeasy space to bring people into town more often so it feels more immersive? I love the town and characters but I often run out of time before I can get that way! Thank you for making it!!
1) Is it possible to make this mod compatible with the Central Station mod and/or find a way to enable the player to bring/buy a horse to Rocky Ford Farm? I've been currently treating the Rocky Ford Farm as a "rancher's paradise" of sorts and have reforested most of the Fostoria map. (I later intend to reforest the Schafer Farm or fill it with wild grass for their non-existent animals as well if the mod will let me.)
I get the feeling that Fostoria and Stoffton were meant as an alternative small town life to Pelican Town's, in the sense that Fostoria/Stoffton is more religious and a tad more conservative. Families are larger and vaguely remind of rural North American settlements that were colonized by Norwegian, Ukrainian, German, etc. families in the 1800s. If you want "the cowboy" feel... you want your horse along with you. And right now you can't really do that in any way. You waste too much time walking across these maps because there are no other options.
There's even a bus in town but it's one-way only and it's not connected to anything else. Mount Vapius had the same setup, but the bus travel *was unlockable by a bundle*. You could even create Fostoria and Stoffton-relevant bundles for questlines.
2) Would it be possible to enable players to add characters, questlines, and bundles to these towns? Right now, as others have mentioned, the towns are rather empty. Buildings are abandoned with no way to repair them, townspeople's dialogue is more repetitive than what we expect from the average Stardew Valley NPC, h*ck, I just want to give money to that shoe guy to repair the "potholes" in town but I can't even do this sort of simple interaction.
And where's the inter-family drama? If you have large families like this in rural areas, where one family has way more money than the others, it generally creates some level of conflict, including generational conflict. Hatfields and McCoys' level conflict.
3) I also want Jean and Jorts to show up in Stoffton to set up a union in that textile factory. Boom, instant questline.
4) Speaking of animals - would it be possible to add farm animals to the Schafer farm? I'm really wondering where they're getting their produce at this point.
I've enjoyed playing with Stoffton! It makes me sad that people feel the need to leave such negative comments. It's a huge FREE expansion mod that has clearly had a lot of hard work put into it. If it's not for you then fine just don't play it. I love playing with expansions like this as it keeps my Stardew play throughs fresh and interesting! I appreciate modders continuously making these wonderful additions.
I like free expansions like any other, but the problem is stoffton feel empty and without personality, other expansions add things, either to do with new items , explore, with new areas and monsters. Stoffton on the other hand is just a big lifeless town that does not make you feel like you are visiting a new place and meeting new people. It feels like busy work where you interact with characters with one note personalities and most events feel like the player character was inserted out of obligation because they have nothing to add to the scene outside of watching the other characters talk to each other, some times without even reacting to the character. Very rarely is there a "Oh. Hello player" type thing, instead the player just randomly enters peoples houses, sees them go around simple family conversations and leaves.
That is not an expansion, that is someone wanting to code a stardew valley fanfic
This mod looks interesting, yet after playing i am slightly disappointed and agreeing with BootsOfEther, putting the cosmetic aspects aside since not everyone can make interesting looking sprites, the place if big, but feels lackluster, when character events are not quickfire and unconnected they seem to be there to just poke fun without much care about making a character storyline with progress.
For a mod that seems this big, has this many options and a full wiki and family treeline to show who's connected to who, i feel it would have been better to cut the character amount and give the ones that remain arcs if giving everyone one was too much. I could do with more seeing the characters learn and develop and less "And then the pickle guy once again does something picke related, how does he stay in business? Who cares is he not so funny? What, you want to be realistic and tell him that being a ultra niche shop in a small town is a recipy for disaster? Too bad!"
Not every mod needs to be stardew expanded levels of writing, but i think stardew valley expansion type mods work better when they let the characters be characters, not one note pictures or gags
Unfortunately I found this mod to be rather hollow. Looks to be substantial on the surface, albeit a little strange as there are what feels like 19 identical men roaming around,but even when you max out hearts with someone their story feels empty and ill-thought out. Perhaps this would have been better as a fanfic? since many of the characters are more or less just reskinned vanilla characters. The actual code is functional but dialogue is disjointed and unnatural,also the phrase "How could you?" doesn't make sense as a positive gift reaction and is not interchangeable with "you shouldn't have!".
I'm looking forward to giving this a go! I enjoyed reading your story, I know that gaming (albeit a different game) helped me get through the pandemic too. Best wishes, and thanks for all the hard work!
If the NPC's schedules will go to the area of vanilla game (such as Pelican Town), it would be great, just like other extension mods. i think this can make this mod more immersive.
198 comments
1) Is it possible to make this mod compatible with the Central Station mod and/or find a way to enable the player to bring/buy a horse to Rocky Ford Farm? I've been currently treating the Rocky Ford Farm as a "rancher's paradise" of sorts and have reforested most of the Fostoria map. (I later intend to reforest the Schafer Farm or fill it with wild grass for their non-existent animals as well if the mod will let me.)
I get the feeling that Fostoria and Stoffton were meant as an alternative small town life to Pelican Town's, in the sense that Fostoria/Stoffton is more religious and a tad more conservative. Families are larger and vaguely remind of rural North American settlements that were colonized by Norwegian, Ukrainian, German, etc. families in the 1800s. If you want "the cowboy" feel... you want your horse along with you. And right now you can't really do that in any way. You waste too much time walking across these maps because there are no other options.
There's even a bus in town but it's one-way only and it's not connected to anything else. Mount Vapius had the same setup, but the bus travel *was unlockable by a bundle*. You could even create Fostoria and Stoffton-relevant bundles for questlines.
2) Would it be possible to enable players to add characters, questlines, and bundles to these towns? Right now, as others have mentioned, the towns are rather empty. Buildings are abandoned with no way to repair them, townspeople's dialogue is more repetitive than what we expect from the average Stardew Valley NPC, h*ck, I just want to give money to that shoe guy to repair the "potholes" in town but I can't even do this sort of simple interaction.
And where's the inter-family drama? If you have large families like this in rural areas, where one family has way more money than the others, it generally creates some level of conflict, including generational conflict. Hatfields and McCoys' level conflict.
3) I also want Jean and Jorts to show up in Stoffton to set up a union in that textile factory. Boom, instant questline.
4) Speaking of animals - would it be possible to add farm animals to the Schafer farm? I'm really wondering where they're getting their produce at this point.
That is not an expansion, that is someone wanting to code a stardew valley fanfic
For a mod that seems this big, has this many options and a full wiki and family treeline to show who's connected to who, i feel it would have been better to cut the character amount and give the ones that remain arcs if giving everyone one was too much.
I could do with more seeing the characters learn and develop and less "And then the pickle guy once again does something picke related, how does he stay in business? Who cares is he not so funny? What, you want to be realistic and tell him that being a ultra niche shop in a small town is a recipy for disaster? Too bad!"
Not every mod needs to be stardew expanded levels of writing, but i think stardew valley expansion type mods work better when they let the characters be characters, not one note pictures or gags