One Month In - My Thoughts

[gordon861]

OK one month in and I thought I'd give my thoughts as a complete newbi to farming sim.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the game, I bought it during the Steam discount and currently have nearly 190 hours in game.

• Not exacty impressed with the instructions, either in game or the PDF. They seem to rely on the fact that you already know about farming without actually explaining the basics. Without Google and YouTube I doubt I'd be as far along as I am.

• This game desperately needs a diary/calendar/log. If I plant a crop and plan to leave it for three cycles before plowing and changing the crop it would help if I knew where in the cycle I was. At the very least a text file that auto logged when I bought something or did something to a field. I tried to do it myself with an external text file but without a day number it makes keeping a log extremely difficult. I was wondering about buying something cheap at the start of the new game and using that as my calendar by checking how old it is but I shouldn't need to do this.

• We need historical price curves so you have some idea of what is a good/bad price and you can spot if a price rises at a particular time of day. Also if you implemented Item 2 above, you could also add variations over multiple days to help with the variation.
  Another idea is perhaps a MOD author(or Giant) could use data collected from players that install a MOD and use what they sell in their games to influence the prices. Even if this just added a 10-20% variation it would discourage players just planting the flavour of the month. The system would have to only lower prices if another price is increased in order to stop everything being bottomed out. It could work along the lines of the MMO stats so that a positive 1% added to one crop would mean that a negative 1% is placed on another, but it should help mess with the prices.

• The in game shop for buying equipment could do with more information on items. For example the 'Roll-Belt 150' says it produces 'convenient bales' but fails to mention that these a round ones, its description and icons are identical to the 'BigBaler 1290' which we know produces square bales.

• The in game shop could also do with a preview button so that when you think it'd be a great idea to make this new purchase yellow, you get a chance to see how horrendous it is before you press buy.

• Icons, this game has so many icons spread throughout the game, why do none of them 'mouse over' to see what they actually mean?

• ModHub. Personally I like the fact that all the MODs need to go through some sort of quality control by the DEVs before they appear, to many Workshop MODs just seem to fight with each other or have problems when something is updated, might find this is true here too but not yet. One improvement would be for a search facility in the in game MOD page to aid finding what you are looking for though.

Please don't take my comments as just complaining, I like the game, I wouldn't have 190 hours in the first month if I didn't.

Personally I'm really looking forward to FS19.

[anonymouz]

I second this/all of that!
These are some of the tiny Improvements FS19 should get, and alot more.

[gordon861]

I'm currently still messing with the first Goldcrest map I loaded.

Running on Normal, 1x fertilise, plow every 3 crops, buying my own refills rather than helpers refill, and got sheep and pigs. My plan is to keep ramping up the options as I get a chance to try out as many things as possible before switching to a modded map.

[Jalars86]

I agree, Seasons mod really helps a lot with realism and keeping track of things. Before I always felt a little like I was wandering aimlessly through the game. Now, there are set days and seasons and it makes it so much more enjoyable. Plus, the price history on crops is a big help.

Seasons works on the Goldcrest map, but you'll have to start a new savegame as far as I know.

[DirectCedar]

You don't have to start a new save to add Seasons, but it is best to do it after all crops are harvested, as enabling Seasons mid-save will likely reset most of your fields to Harvested regardless what growth state they were at. At least that is what I observed.

[fenixguy]

I approve this post. Welcome to the forums. All of the above would be great improvements.

[redglasses]

If I may show my view on each of your points
-I mean this is true, it could use some more explaining but isn't there a place for instructions in the ingame menu, or is this the menu your complaining about? Also if your having problems you should try playing the tutorials, I recommended them to a friend who was having some issue and he found them very useful.

-You can use the map in the menus to see where the crop's growth is at and which fertilizer stage its at. You can also see if your field needs plowing or not.

-Another point which could possibly be solved by playing through the tutorials

-You can always change it back for free if you own a vehicle workshop or have the tool box mod, you can also change it at the store but it will cost you $1000. If your willing to go through the trouble you can save your game before changing it, if you dont like it exit without saving.

-I'm pretty sure you can walk over to them and read what they mean.

-I agree tghat a search function would be nice. Also just btw you can get mods from outside websites.

I'm glad your liking the game so far. Have fun getting to 500 hours

[Gimli54]

Welcome to the club, hope you keep enjoying the game, I got lucky when I started played in that I grew up around an agricultural farm so I knew that element of the game like the back of my hand but when it came to animals and stuff like that I had to use the help section of the menu cause I had no idea what to do really, seasons helps with keeping track of time because without the mod it’s just a fine of day and time can kinda get confused if you don’t keep stuff straight

[Smith Modding]

ModHub. Personally I like the fact that all the MODs need to go through some sort of quality control by the DEVs before they appear, to many Workshop MODs just seem to fight with each other or have problems when something is updated, might find this is true here too but not yet. One improvement would be for a search facility in the in game MOD page to aid finding what you are looking for though.

The mods downloaded directly from the ingame ModHub or the website go through testing by GIANTS, but steam workshop items and mods from other sites have no guarantee on the quality