Just a suggestion

[monroegj]

First of all love the game!!!!! Been playing from the begining. While 19 has brought some wonderful and exciting new things l personally feel that 17 was a better overall experience. In my humble opinion I think that Giants is over reaching at times. First off you not only have a game you put out every two years but also the editor for developers ( I wont call them modders because thats not what they do they develop content for the game). If you got rid of the number 13,15,17,19 you could change the way that Giants incorporates content. The content could be sold each couple years but the overall game and editor would not need to completely changed. I feel that this would be a huge leap forward. 17 took almost the full two years to get to the point where people were much happier with the playing experience, only to purchase 19 and have to completely start over not just players but also " modders". The content that was released in 19 should have been sold as an expansion to 17 I and I am sure a lot of others would after two years been happy to pay the $ 90 to get the upgrades but also not lose the great content (mods) already developed.
Thank you to Giants and all the independant developers (modders) out there for the great product.

[Cmtaylor]

First of all love the game!!!!! Been playing from the begining. While 19 has brought some wonderful and exciting new things l personally feel that 17 was a better overall experience. In my humble opinion I think that Giants is over reaching at times. First off you not only have a game you put out every two years but also the editor for developers ( I wont call them modders because thats not what they do they develop content for the game). If you got rid of the number 13,15,17,19 you could change the way that Giants incorporates content. The content could be sold each couple years but the overall game and editor would not need to completely changed. I feel that this would be a huge leap forward. 17 took almost the full two years to get to the point where people were much happier with the playing experience, only to purchase 19 and have to completely start over not just players but also " modders". The content that was released in 19 should have been sold as an expansion to 17 I and I am sure a lot of others would after two years been happy to pay the $ 90 to get the upgrades but also not lose the great content (mods) already developed.
Thank you to Giants and all the independant developers (modders) out there for the great product.

[Goose66]

Completely agree. Even to the point of releasing some more DLC after the first couple of years. A 3 to 4 year release would fix a lot of the time constraints publishers put on the developers and make for a far better finished product.

[ilovetrains]

a common sense, practical assessment and suggestion.

[TheSwede]

[PoggleBox]

ATS and ETS2 pretty much follow this path. But, also, every time there is a major update, it breaks mods for the game. Which means, until and if the modders fix their mods, the saves using those mods become unusable or broken at best. So to suggest it would 'fix' issues with the development of the game is stretching what would happen in reality quite a bit. Not only that, but the development of the aforementioned games is very slow. New features don't come along often.

[Jagtractor]

I vote 4 to 5 years.
Have a big dlc Every year for the first 2 years then they start focusing on the next game for the remaining 3 years. Letting the modders really get into the swing of things while Giants take the steps to make the next game really special.
Oh and these dlcs wouldn't have any maps included. I do play the Giants maps cause I have little options in the beginning months of the game. but once those modded maps start rolling out i never touch the Giants maps again. Thus this would leave development manpower of dlcs to focus more on the tractors and brands. Things that we don't get a lot of from the modders
17 was really releasing some top top quality maps and mods at the end and it feels like we just got this train moving and then we switched tracks
All i know is that i hope they don't release another farm sim for ps4/Xbox 1. These consoles are stretched to what they can do from Giants and the next generation in needed to up the visuals for us lowly console people.

[Goose66]

FS is nothing like those 2 games. They seem to update nearly every week or so. FS does not do that. What the op means is more time to develop the next game while allowing modders to keep up their great work. Perhaps adding some more dlc along the way.
Making sure the next one is tested fully, all working correctly and having a year or two extra to do that.

[thumbwiz]

It's not about making things better for the players, it's about collecting cash for a full priced game every 2 years from the players. It's not going to change until modders stop completing the game for them.

[PoggleBox]

@Goose66 Those 2 games are on update 1.33. They update roughly every 6 months, usually prior to DLC release. Occasionally bringing new content to the game. I have >3000 hours playing them with mods and without mods. So I do know something about them. No developer, even those with extraordinary budgets can afford to spend 4 years working on something to bring to market without income. Even if they produce DLC more frequently.

The OP Mentions that 17 took 2 years to get to the state that people were happier with the game. The reason for this is because of mods. It's why this forum is inundated with mod requests and mod speculation. Without those mods for 17 do you think they would have had the sales success with 19 that they have had? The answer is a resounding NO. The ability to mod the game is what has made it what it is. Expecting Giants to do what the modders do is naive. Also expecting the improvements that 19 brings over 17 not to conflict with older mods is also naive. Which is my point. The game (19) has been out for less than 2 months and there are already over 200 mods that have been submitted to Giants Modhub for consideration. That far outweighs the creativity and development time that Giants themselves could bring to bear on the game. They fully realise this which is why mods are part of their design philosophy.

19 will follow the same development cycle that 17 did. Giants will hopefully work through the performance issues it suffers from along with releasing some licenced DLC to boot. Modders will bring innovative content to the game just like they did/do with 17. The early influx of mods is to be expected because the modders largely already know what they are doing which was not the case at the start with 17. However, quality mods like Courseplay and Seasons require significantly more development time because they are very complex and improving on the existing mods and incorporating new features.

[Beastbubba]

There are alot of things about 19 that are much better than 17 that coulden't have been added via dlc. The engine had to be modified for 19... After we get the most wanted mods and some DLC it will vastly outshine 17.

Now, I agree they should get away from the 2yr cycle and actually add more content and improvments before putting out a new game. Seasons, GPS, AI that dosen't require courseplay, and more mods should have been in the base game years ago...

And the game needs full beta testing and fixing before release. Selling a game and having the players beta test it is just downright immoral imo, and Giants isen't the only ones doing it as of late.

[Beastbubba]

Ohh, and they desperatly need to finally fix the physics. They improved them some from 15 to 17 and some more from 17 to 19, but the physics are still terrible.

I enjoy bailing and stacking bales. But when they randomly start vibrating and shifting around and then exploding all over the place it just makes me want to scream...

[Gimli54]

As someone mentioned earlier another reason why dlc with new features is hard to do is you have to introduce new code (potentially) and things of that nature, in the event of large changes some mods like seasons would probably need a rework after every big dlc, I’m ok with the two year cycle but I wish the publisher would allow them more time to debug the game and stop making the players be the beta testers, I love 19 don’t get me wrong but I never realized how much I used mods and enjoyed them in 17 so for now I’m just waiting for mods to build up before I get a map that build a farm on

[ilovetrains]

interesting comments about improving the game through DLC, I have steadily refused to buy ANY DLC because the base game has so many problems.

[eric21]

But Not major problems