[To GIANTS Software] Three questions/suggestions. Price, development and back-up.

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Dr. Bob
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[To GIANTS Software] Three questions/suggestions. Price, development and back-up.

Post by Dr. Bob »

I've been playing FS14 and think I've gained some insights. Question is whether they are shared by Giants Software. The game is getting older (FS16/17). What happens now?

1. The in-game purchases.
I've counted eleven of them. At €0,89 it would cost almost 10 euro to buy the 'full' game. FS16 costs half that and you get even more machinery including for forestry as I understand. No sane person would pay twice the price for an older, more limited version. With FS17 around the corner it's even more rational to lower the in-game price considerably, to €0,10 or maybe €0,20 to allow buying the full game for a reasonable price. If you lower it to the 'no-brainer' level where people don't really have to make a conscious decision to make a purchase or not you get a whole lot more sales, provided you know how to inform the public about it. I don't know how much Google shaves off for themselves with each purchase, whether it is a constant percentage or also a fixed sum per purchase, so it might be useful to first release an update in which all machines can be unlocked at once with a single purchase. Then you might choose €0,99 or €1,99 and you will lose the €0,10 'magic' effect though. Do you actually ever have 'Sales' for in-game purchases btw?

2. Still actively maintained?
Please let me know whether there is any chance that suggestions I might provide for improvements would ever get implemented in FS14. I expect most work is being done on developing FS17 and also on maintaining FS16. Is FS14 still being maintained or are you basically 'done' with it? Some improvements I could suggest could be used in the later games too but I'd like to know whether I could see them turn up in FS14 too or whether I'd have to 'upgrade' to a later version for that.

3. Back-ups, back-ups, back-ups!
Because I've invested many hours in reaching the level I am at I want to safeguard that. I'm playing on an unrooted device which limits my ability to find and back-up the relevant files. I have tried Helium/Carbon but it informs me FS14 is one of a few apps that are "disallowed" or something. HUH!?! What's up here? I want control over the effects of MY game efforts! The time I spent! I can't merely rely on the in-game Save option because I don't seem to get access to the files that progress is saved in. One bad crash and the data is irretrievably corrupted. I don't want to use Google Sync even if that might provide additional back-up because it is WAY!!! too vague and gives me FAR!!! too little control too. I also don't use Google Play Game/Drive and don't want to use it. I prefer to be in control of MY data and nobody else, certainly not Google. So any means for back-up using those would be useless too.

Please save the game state/progress in files in a location people on an unrooted device have access to and/or allow Helium to make back-ups.
Last edited by Dr. Bob on Mon Jul 04, 2016 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Navan
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Re: [To GIANTS Software] Three questions/suggestions. Price, development and back-up.

Post by Navan »

It doesn't help for iOS people, but FS14 is on Amazon Underground where it's 100% free and no iap. Android users just have to be willing live with Amazon's tracking.
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Dr. Bob
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Re: [To GIANTS Software] Three questions/suggestions. Price, development and back-up.

Post by Dr. Bob »

Yeah, but can you install that Amazon version over the Play Store one and keep your game progress? Since I can't make a proper back-up until I've rooted the device (which might require a factory reset anyway) I don't want to try that route.

Or does anyone know a way to save your game progress data that DOES work?
Navan
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Re: [To GIANTS Software] Three questions/suggestions. Price, development and back-up.

Post by Navan »

Yeah that i cannot unfortunately answer for you. If you use a USB cable or get a file explorer, you might be able to locate the save file, but i cannot guarentee that would back it up or allow it to transfer since i don't have the play store version to test with. I also do not have FS14 installed anymore due to space limits.
Stegei
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Re: [To GIANTS Software] Three questions/suggestions. Price, development and back-up.

Post by Stegei »

You know that the security is properly implemented on Android, if no tool exists to manually copy these files. I would be worried if an app could copy the data from other apps.

There is a cloud save support, where you can manually push savegames to the Google cloud when you think the time is right. This is the way Android was designed to allow storing backups.
If you have suggestions how to allow storing backups of the savegames without Google cloud, we are happy to consider implementing them. Allowing any app to access the savegames is however definitely no viable way.
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Dr. Bob
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Re: [To GIANTS Software] Three questions/suggestions. Price, development and back-up.

Post by Dr. Bob »

Thanks for your reply Stegei.

Those 'cloud-saves' are not for me. Usually way too vague and uncontrollable from what I read about it failing for other people. And what Google wants is generally good for Google but less so for me. I don't want my data in their hands where they can scan it and profile me even more than they do already, as I cannot prevent all of it from happening.

Many apps (games) save their data in subdirectories in \sdcard\Android\data and/or \sdcard\Android\obb where it can be accessed on an unrooted device. Others unfortunately store it in a subdirectory in \data\data where it is inaccessible unless rooted. I have several rooted devices but the one on which I play FS14 is unfortunately not (yet) rooted. There are folders named com.giantssoftware.fs14 in both Android\data and \obb but they are empty. I suspect the developers have chosen to store the game data in the inaccessible \data\data location. Not a choice I welcome.

I thought Helium should be able to do more than a regular app with the help of Carbon on unrooted devices. I was surprised to read it still cannot back-up some app data. I haven't yet tried an ADB back-up from a PC but that's a bit of a hassle.

But this is what Helium told me. Consider it asked.

Image

Since I don't (want to) use those cloud-saves I don't know whether you are then able to access those files some other way. Does Google give you access to those files through some web-interface? Can you then simply download them and have the saved data anyway?

One other option would be to simply allow the user to back-up the savegame data in a file that they can write in any location of their choice. On an external SD card for instance where you can then also copy it to a PC for safekeeping.
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