The Field Mission Systems

[cwattyeso]

I really enjoy the game Noraf, if I didn't I wouldn't have sunk 1047 hours into it on Steam Currently and 232 hours on PS4. I'm playing the game approx 8-10 hours each and every day since it released. However with each update we've had the game hasn't gotten better and things like the contracts have gotten worse. What this means for me is that now I'm starting to see and experience the limitations of the game, and how every single new save game on whatever map you decide to load up, runs to the exact same script and path almost. You're drawn into that cycle of just plough, seed, fertilise and harvest of the same crop type repeatedly to make money, alongside buying and selling horses, because they make good money. It's very difficult to start a brand new save and break the routine and do a completely different style and approach. The alternatives to playing the game, making money and making progress just aren't there and it seems what was, has gotten stilted or broken with each update from Giants. I was really looking forward to doing a series where I owned no farm or fields of my own and was going to operate purely as a contractor, build up a contractor company, get a huge fleet of vehicles, be able to hire workers for me eventually etc. However with the contract system in game as it is, that's just not a viable play option now. At least not unless you want the series to be 400 episodes/400 hours long at which time I think any viewers would have long gotten bored and stopped watching.

[FarmBoss]

I really enjoy the game Noraf, if I didn't I wouldn't have sunk 1047 hours into it on Steam Currently and 232 hours on PS4. I'm playing the game approx 8-10 hours each and every day since it released. However with each update we've had the game hasn't gotten better and things like the contracts have gotten worse. What this means for me is that now I'm starting to see and experience the limitations of the game, and how every single new save game on whatever map you decide to load up, runs to the exact same script and path almost. You're drawn into that cycle of just plough, seed, fertilise and harvest of the same crop type repeatedly to make money, alongside buying and selling horses, because they make good money. It's very difficult to start a brand new save and break the routine and do a completely different style and approach. The alternatives to playing the game, making money and making progress just aren't there and it seems what was, has gotten stilted or broken with each update from Giants. I was really looking forward to doing a series where I owned no farm or fields of my own and was going to operate purely as a contractor, build up a contractor company, get a huge fleet of vehicles, be able to hire workers for me eventually etc. However with the contract system in game as it is, that's just not a viable play option now. At least not unless you want the series to be 400 episodes/400 hours long at which time I think any viewers would have long gotten bored and stopped watching.

Must be nice! I have to work 8 - 10 hours a day. Did you win the lottery or something?

[cwattyeso]

No I'm a YouTube & Twitch Content Creator. That's kind of my vocation for the past few years whilst I deal with ongoing health issues and physical disabilities which prevent me from holding and taking up more traditional employment as I'm not able to leave my home and move about much because of my health.

[FarmBoss]

No I'm a YouTube & Twitch Content Creator. That's kind of my vocation for the past few years whilst I deal with ongoing health issues and physical disabilities which prevent me from holding and taking up more traditional employment as I'm not able to leave my home and move about much because of my health.

Awesome. I envy folks that have been able to make a living from youtube and similar platforms. I guess I'm just not creative or ambitious enough.

[cwattyeso]

I wouldn't say it makes me a living, but it occupies my time and stops me going insane and climbing the walls whilst I deal with my issues which have obviously impacted me tremendously not just professionally but also socially. When you're kind of isolated and out of people's sight, you're also out of their mind. So by doing the YouTube & Twitch stuff I'm trying to engage with people in a way I can't in the normal course of day to day life.

[cwattyeso]

there's an old saying.. actions speak louder than words

in this case the Actions are:

I don't see an action for lease, I see an action for borrow items.

If someone did some digging I think you'd find that this changed during one of the early updates, originally you'd lease equipment, it was new, then it got changed to borrow and now the equipment is used. I remember seeing the new system and thinking they half ass did it as the text with the contracts didn't change, but the actions did.

Was playing the game today and noticed this on the contract screen, so it does clearly state "LEASE EQUIPMENT" in the main window. The button text may have changed to say "Borrow Items" but the rest of the screen and information presented is no different then prior to the patch.



What I would do is change the text on the screen so that it doesn't say "Use your own equipment or lease equipment for a reward reduced by £124" and instead have it say "Use your own equipment for a additional reward of £124"

Therefore if I accept the contract and borrow the Farmer's equipment I'll get paid £583 for completing the task. If I elect to use my own equipment the Farmer pays me £583+£124 for a total of £707 for completing the job. That would go quite a long way to rectify the the changes Giants have made with the patch and make the contracts actually make sense with what is actually occurring in game.

[FarmBoss]

Giants isn't known to be consistent with their development.
Having a button that says Borrow and the description that says Lease is a shining example of their inconsistencies.
The two words have different meanings, but I guess they missed that during development and again during QA.

[BigC92]

i love where cwattyeso is coming from, im not good at math or crunching numbers, but as he said, in fs17 everything was filled up and ready to go, and it was worth doing contracts, and your barrowed THEIR equipment, not leasing equipment with 35 hours on it, you basically barrowing used equipment, i would love to go to the farmers houses to use their equipment to do the mission, instead of going to the dealership to pick it up, but the farmer hiring you should provide everything for you, if a farmer is hiring me to clean, lets say horse stalls, i expect him or her to have everything i need to clean stalls, so im not going to buy seed and fertilizer when him or her should provide the seed and fertilizer for me. It's like your being s u c k e r punched, or better yet, they could pay you more to buy it. My question is, why don't i see Poplar and sugarcane in the mission system?

[Sir_Kutz]

I think you are reading into the text on that contract screen a bit much. After completing a contract with your own equipment you should notice that you are not being charged a leasing fee. And for the sake of the game I'm going to use the terms borrow and lease interchangeably. You definitely have more hours in the game than I do. You must've noticed those things.

Is the game perfect? no, but I'd rather enjoy the game vs. searching for "problems".

[BigC92]

Yes, but if we don't have the equipment for the mission, their charging us to lease vehicles when the button says to barrow, that's a bit misleading as cwattyeso said.

[Noraf]

I still dine't get why you should get an extra bonus for using your own equiptment.
The tarmer offers you a set price. If you don't have the equiptment needet or don't want to use your own, you get paid less. I really can't see why you should get paid the same?

[cwattyeso]

Why get a bonus for using my own equipment over the farmer’s? Simple, because I’ve had to buy the equipment at great expense to myself and therefore the wear & tear, maintaining it, putting the fuel in etc that comes at expense to me is a cost which the Farmer should have to compensate me for if I’m providing the equipment. He’s saving money else. If we use his equipment it would be his machines picking up those extra hours of use and those additional costs. He would have factored that into his calculations before coming up with the base job price. So it makes much more sense if he's offering someone £5,000 to fertilise a field with his equipment, that he should have to pay extra if you're going to provide the equipment. Almost think of it now as him having to lease your machines. So now the contract is £5,500 for example if I elect to provide all the equipment.

Think of the extra reward for using your own equipment as basically a re-negotiation of the original offered amount and contract for basically saying to the farmer, “Don’t worry pal I’ll use my own much better equipment and you can leave yours in the shed on this day.” Which offers the Farmer the option to then take that equipment and do another job somewhere else, which he couldn't do before. He then is becoming more productive, which in term makes him more profitable, and that should come at a slightly higher cost to him then the original amount offered.

[Noraf]

This is exactly what are happening now!
Though, they don't call it a bonus, and it's the other way around, where the farmer says, don't worry, you can use my equipment, but I'll retract xxx from the contract.
So the bonus for using your equipment is already present.

[cwattyeso]

I feel like I'm banging my head against the brick wall called Noraf here. IT MAKES NO BLOODY LOGICAL/GAMEPLAY/REAL WORLD/SIMULATION SENSE THAT A FARMER WOULD RETRACT XXX FROM A JOB FOR USING THE FARMER'S OWN EQUIPMENT. He's going to use that equipment himself if you don't accept the contract, so why on earth would he deduct xxx because I choose to sit in and operate it freeing him up to go do something else? He should however pay more if I'm electing to bring my vastly larger/superior/more expensive equipment onto his farm to do the job for him.

What I'm saying and you're not getting is that Giants have got the system back to front, and need to reverse it. You should not get any deduction or anything like that for borrowing the farmer equipment. You should however get a bonus for using your own equipment, because again using Logical & Real World experience here, is equipment is being spared or it's being freed to allow him to do something else whilst I'm doing field he wants.

10 years ago I used to work for a Golf Club that also had a side business in providing Turf to people and companies/industries. The Greenkeeper who used to manage all the land and do all the tasks on the course and turf fields retired. We then hired a company to come and do the work that he used to do. When the company was doing certain tasks for us like mowing the greens, fairways, rough, and turf fields using our mowers and equipment they only got paid for the labour and time their worker was operating our machines. On occasions where we needed other tasks doing like spraying to kill Fusarium, they would provide the spraying machine and now we would have to pay them not only for the labour of the bloke operating the machine, but the work hours of the machine, the fuel and the fungicide they applied. What we didn't do was say to them, hey come and mow our course, here's our mower, but hey because you're using our mower we're going to take money off you. The company would have laughed in our face and cancelled the contract. Same way if we turned round to them and said we weren't going to pay them for bringing a sprayer to our course, cover the fuel cost and fungicide used, they would not turn up and do the job, again they'd have laughed in our face and cancelled the contract.

[Sir_Kutz]

I honestly think we can use logic here. We DO understand that there is a leasing fee for leasing equipment, again for the sake of the game I think we can use the terms lease and borrow interchangeably. There is no product or equipment in FS that we can actually borrow, so logiclly there will be a fee. It just feels like we are looking for things to complain about.