Become the Mayor! (Game Suggestion)

GG Cannon

Tiller
I made this suggestion through the Steam Discussion Forums and it was actually very well received and had quite a bit of suggestions. I also shared it (translated) on a Brazilian Stardew facebook group and people also seemed to like quite a bit, and on Reddit, this suggestion got almost 300 upvotes in the first 24h while it was on the hot page, so I thought I should also share it here, on the official Stardew Valley forums.


| Pre-Requisite |​
Community Center path:
Rebuild the Community Center and have already finished all bundles including the missing bundle inside the closed Joja Market.

Joja Path:
Have finished the whole Joja questline and bought all community upgrades.

| Trigger |​
At the spring of the 4th year and at the spring of every 4 years after, after visiting the town, there is gonna be a cutscene about Lewis campaigning to be Mayor again and someone comments that he is gonna win anyway because no one ever runs against him.

After the cutscene, the player can go talk to Lewis and say "You know what? I think I can do a good job as a Mayor. What do you think Lewis? Ready for some competition?"
(Lewis answer will depend on your friendship with him)

Community Center path:
After that, the player will have to walk around town and talk to the NPCs who can vote (adults including the Librarian, Linus and the Wizard) to inform them that he is also running for Mayor.

Joja Path:
After the end of the cutscene, you will start a questline where you have to inform inside Joja and request their support, fulfilling several tiny requests such as printing flyers, pasting posters around town, making a speech, etc.

| Win Condition |​
Finish you path's questline and have 6+ friendship with at least half of all NPCs.
(Special event if you have 6+ friendship with every single NPC and 8 friendship with Lewis)

| Result event |​
Less than 6 friendship with half the NPCs:
Lewis wins again and there is a short cutscene of Lewis on top of a stage thanking the citizens and giving a short speech with the results in a graph behind him, showing how many voted for him and how many voted for the player.

6+ friendship with half:
Every NPC is gonna gather in the town's square, Lewis gives the player the Mayor ribbon and looks a bit sad while the player is congratulated by the townsfolk, showing the results in a graph behind the player of how many people voted for him and how many voted for Lewis.

6+ with every single NPC and 8 friendship with Lewis:
The same cutscene in the townsquare, but everyone is euphoric and Lewis seems extremely happy to give you the Mayor's ribbon, saying how he can finally retire and that there couldn't be a better person to be his successor. He mentions that even he voted for you and the graph shows that the player was elected with 100% of the votes and Lewis has 0 votes.
After saying that there could be no one else better to be his successor, Lewis will say that he wants to add a few more words and calls for the attention of everyone while still on stage.
He declares that he is gonna retire and not run for mayor again (which from this point on, this quest will not trigger anymore after every 4 in-game year since no one there is no one to run against the player), finishing that, he requests for Marnie to come up on stage.
He gets down on a knee, gets a ring and proposes to Marnie in front of everyone, asking her to marry him officially. He mentions how they don't have a single reason to keep their relationship hidden anymore and how he truly wants to dedicate the rest of his life for his love for her.
A few days later, there will be a cutscene of their marriage event on the start of the day.

| Reward |​
As Mayor, the office inside the Community Center or an office inside the Joja Mart store becomes yours to use as the Mayors Office.
As mayor, you can make changes and decisions that add more improvements to the town.

The player receives several small choices and tiny quests or opportunities to invest tax money or do something that makes changes that actually can be seen to the town, such as:
  • Improving or building something like a new and fully equipped hospital for the town's doctor instead of his tiny clinic or a new school where penny starts to work as a teacher and principal (or another or even a new character becomes the principal).
  • Improvements that would make real visual or even utility change to the town and surrounding regions such as new streets, new accessible locations, new things to do around town, new fishing spots with new fishes.
  • Cleaning all the trash in the water in and around the town, that makes it literally impossible to fish trash from that moment on even on your own farm.
  • Besides receiving the complaints of the citizens which would be like small quests to be solved within the Mayor's Office in the Community Center.

Besides that, there would unlock a new location to visit in another town and new NPCs that would visit from time to time related to the Mayor's job.

| Extra |​
Together with these changes, the Community Center after being rebuilt would become a place with actual utility, such as being able to cook in the kitchen, having a sewing machine in the crafting room, besides other unique crafting functions for unique items such as paintings, sculpting and other decorations, every day being able to get a few cooking items for free in the storage room, being able to get some coal in the boiler room and putting fishes for display in the fish tank with actual result in the townsfolk happiness and friendship that can even reduce the loss of friendship to zero, reading in the bookshelf and so on.
 

Fat Link

Cowpoke
I fully support this.

I’ve always thought of Lewis as a creep and I’ve never enjoyed dealing with him.

To become mayor in his place and even be able to boot him out of town altogether would be the cherry on top of an already damn near perfect game.
 

Lew Zealand

Helper
Then we can have a new spinoff game called Stardew City, which is really just a SimCity clone just the same way that SDV is a Harvest Moon clone.

Everybody wins!
Uh oh, now when the Meteor hits you don't get any useful Iridium, instead parts of the town are destroyed. Summer 3 Y1 has a random chance of destroying each building in town. Pepper Rexes climb out of the Sewers and hang out in front of Pam's trailer amongst the empty booze containers. Mummies start pouring out of Harvey's Clinic and donate extra wrappings to JojaMart to help covid shortages. A volcano shows up, consumes Marnie's house thus saving you from ever missing a last-second Animal purchase again. Downside: Parrots run the show now and ask Holy Grail Bridgekeeper questions before you can buy Hay.

You'd better be the King or you won't know these things.
 
So there will be sort of a prompt?
The original post indicated a cut scene followed by a dialog choice with Lewis to start you on the path of running for mayor. I'm sure if there were 2 options you could easily choose to either run or not run.
  1. "I think you do a great job as Mayor which is why no one else is running against you"
  2. "You know what? I think I can do a good job as a Mayor. What do you think Lewis? Ready for some competition?"
 
The original post indicated a cut scene followed by a dialog choice with Lewis to start you on the path of running for mayor. I'm sure if there were 2 options you could easily choose to either run or not run.
  1. "I think you do a great job as Mayor which is why no one else is running against you"
  2. "You know what? I think I can do a good job as a Mayor. What do you think Lewis? Ready for some competition?"
So If a choose the first one I can't run? Awesome!
 

tomaO2

Sodbuster
Most of these changes can just be additional community upgrade options, and I'm personally against new areas after achieving the perfection status. I think we are done for new areas. The mountain cutscene felt extremely final. It would feel weird to tack on new major things to accomplish after this point. I've been thinking of making a new thread on this topic.

Some sort of quest to get Marnie and Louis together would be fine though.
 

LRangerR

Local Legend
Most of these changes can just be additional community upgrade options, and I'm personally against new areas after achieving the perfection status. I think we are done for new areas. The mountain cutscene felt extremely final. It would feel weird to tack on new major things to accomplish after this point. I've been thinking of making a new thread on this topic.
What about people who will never get the "perfection" cutscene, for whatever reason?
 

tomaO2

Sodbuster
What about them? You literally just told me in another post that you don't even agree with the community center being rebuilt, which is something most people will never do. According to the steam achievements, only 18% of people have finished it, with another 3% going the Joja route. The OP already is limiting people that can do it by saying it comes after the community center quest is done. The assumption that only X percentage of people can get this option is part of the suggestion. Arguing beyond that is just semantics of the exact percentage of players that should be allowed.

The game is a sandbox, but also has a storyline, if you want to follow it. At some point, the storyline comes to an end. Perfection, regardless of how little you care for it, is that ending.

One third of players haven't even made 15k gold in the game. That's basically like people dropping out of a game on the first or second level. No one would argue someone that is unwilling to play a platform shooter should be able to see the ending if you can't even win the first stage.
 

LRangerR

Local Legend
The perfection ending being worthless aside, i said "for whatever reason", meaning we're setting my personal feelings aside, just like you're personally against new areas.
 

tomaO2

Sodbuster
Okaaaay, so what you said is,

"What about people who will never get the "perfection" cutscene, setting my feeling aside?" That doesn't really change my answer. Your feelings are not pertinent to the question you asked. If you want something, you have to work for it, and it's unlikely that any new areas added would be open from the start of the game either, so there is always going to be an element of work to unlock any new area that is added.

As for me being personally against new areas, the mountain cutscene felt final. If it hasn't been the way it was, if it didn't so some credit roll call, then my opinion would be different, but it wasn't. Building the community center didn't give this feeling, nor did getting married, or collecting all the golden walnuts.

Besides, there is an end point for new content. We all know this. I'd rather finish polishing up what we have, and add more family content, than I am about yet another new area to the base game. If Concerned Ape wants to do another new area, I think it should be a DLC instead.
 
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LRangerR

Local Legend
Well, you twisting the meaning of my posts aside, "If you want something you have to work for it" is a pretty lame cop-out excuse to get people to do what you want, imo.

The mountain cutscene was weird, but it didn't feel "final" to me. It may have felt final to you and others, though, which i accept. To me though, it felt more like the closing of a chapter. If CA decides it's the final chapter, then I'll leave that for him to decide.

Oh and...
We all know this.
I'd appreciate if you refrained from telling people what they do and do not know.
 

liquidcat

Moderator
Staff member
Hey guys! This convo is getting a bit sidetracked now so let's go back to the topic at hand and let's try to remember that context and tone sometimes get lost in text and try to be mindful of each other and give each other benefit of doubt!

I personally really like the idea of running for mayor/idea of lewis finally stepping down and letting someone be the new mayor in general! Him stepping down would be a good closure to his character arc, some of the suggestions op shared are interesting as well, if this is ever added in the game, I would be curious to see how the devs tackle it!
 
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