Are the developers listening to us at all?

SNES, HM64, BTN, STH, A Wonderful Life, Another Wonderful Life, AWL:SE, Magical Melody, Puzzle de HM, Tree of Tranquility, Animal Parade, Frantic Farming, Hero of Leaf Valley, My Little Shop, Seeds of Memories, Lil' Farmers, Light of Hope, Popolocrois: SoS, and Doraemon: SoS.
RodCopper Fishin
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Post  Posted:

I was thinking yesterday about how we as a fan base have been very up front and vocal about wanting a child system in these games like AWL in 2004. They gave us AP in 2008 and I think a lot of us were very happy with that, but ever since then I feel like every single entry has had a disappointing child system. There is not one entry that has come close to what we want. On top of that, they gave us 2 kids in the first SoS entry, and then promptly took it back to one. Idk why but yesterday the absurdity of an entire fandom asking for one feature for 17 years straight and being denied every time just hit me. I’m referring to both SoS and HM games here.
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PaleSunflower
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Post  Posted:

Whether or not Marvelous pays much mind to the English fan base has not been confirmed. I assume that they generally ignore the English-speaking fans in favor of their Japanese fan base. We know Marvelous listens to their Japanese fans, because of the outrage of Japanese fans towards the initial release of SoS:PoOT and the official apology that followed from Marvelous. I don't think the English fan base ever received an apology like that from Marvelous, even after the disastrous American release of HM:DS.

One way to look at it is to focus on a feature fans did get, gay marriage, a widely wanted feature by the English fan base that was only added within the last couple of games. The SoS/HM series only started to include gay marriage after Stardew Valley and other successful games included it, despite English fans demanding it for well over a decade. I don't know what the Japanese fans wanted, but I am fairly certain that, if Marvelous was listening to their English fans, then gay marriage would have been an option back in SoS:ToT or even SoS(1) or HM:ANB or maybe earlier.

In addition, if X-Seed's account of what happened is correct, then Marvelous showed no strong interest in putting gay marriage in the Rune Factory games for years, despite the English community and the English translator requesting it for probably at least a decade. Coincidentally, gay marriage was only added to RF5 after an official Japanese fan poll concluded. While we don't know the results of that poll (to my knowledge), it's quite possible that the results are the key reason why the developers behind RF5 seemingly suddenly decided to add gay marriage to it. (Gay marriage was one of the options for desired features within the poll, which was probably intended for the Japanese audience based off the language.) Nothing is confirmed in this case, but the timing is suspicious.
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Post  Posted:

Their Japanese audience rarely continues beyond 1 year after marriage/child birth.

I think Marvelous needs to change the formula of their story telling and story lines. Each game gets bland and stagnant after marriage/child birth, every single one. They treat marriage as an end-game feature when it should really be an early-game feature. We live in different times, our brains have adjusted to a constant, fast-paced level where investing so much time into so much repetition is highly improbably and we get bored of things way faster. To keep their audiences engaged for a much longer time, they need to pack their games with AT LEAST 500-1000% more content, events, character lines, and at least a couple dozen characters. Then don't even get me started on how many missed opportunities there are not having multiplayer capabilities beyond simple trading...

One of the main reasons for them excluding rival marriages in their latest entries is their Japanese audience felt as though they were rushed to get married or felt bad when one bachelor(ette) in town couldn't get married and would be single for life. Multiple marriage candidates for each bachelor(ette) would clear that up immediately.

There's so much more they could do with these games but they just... Don't. It seems they invest most of their creativity into their other IPs...
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