GIANTS focus on the Placeable system for Fs19 was a mistake.

[billy_roberts_81]

Before you come in all guns blazing and shoot me down, do me a favour and read the whole post first before posting.

With Fs19 GIANTS decided to focus massively on the "placeable" system.
The idea behind this is to allow the player greater freedom when playing a map to cater it to his/her preferences.
In principle this sounds like a positive step towards making the game less restrictive.

But is it?

For starters this whole system relies almost 100% on modders to make placeables that are usable for players on maps. Which means you may or may not ever find the placeable you want. For a company to make a feature of the game but rely solely on a 3rd party to make it work is to me a silly mistake. As there is no guarantee that lots of modders are or will want to make placeables.

Next we move to the mod mappers. Modders primarily make mods that they want, and that is to be expected. Why would you spend hundreds or thousands of hours on a project that had no interest to you.
Most mappers I know or have spoken to have little interest in placeables as they would rather build the farmyard they want in GE.
But with Fs19 this isn't a choice anymore. Mappers HAVE to include it in there maps whether they want to or not.
For starters all the animal husbandries HAVE to be added as placeables into the map. All the animated things like gates, and lights etc have to be added to the map as placeables. Then there is the extra coding needed to assign all the various parts of the farmyard to which of the 3 game modes it will appear in or not. All this is extra coding which you HAVE to do, regardless if you as the mapper want to ever use a single placeable or not.

This also brings us onto the next flaw with GIANTS new focus.

The game modes. It is impossible for a mapper do cater for everyones preference.

If I want to allow players to play on the hardest game mode but keep the existing farmyard I can set it as such, but then I am stopping the players who want to play on the hardest setting with no farmyard on the map. The same principle is true of all the game modes. With each one you are restricting a different player type. So it is impossible for the mapper to win.

So the mappers have to think up a different way to get around GIANTS restrictive new system.
What about 1 farm yard that is there for all 3 game modes, then an area that could be used to build on to make a placeable farm. Yes that would work better. It still has some limitations but it caters for more player types.

But if this is the most open way of doing a map then it actually makes the whole way the game has been built a mistake.

In Fs17 we could the same as this. All we needed was the ability to sculpt terrain and paint foliage etc, ingame.

But GIANTS in there usual blinkered way have made it so now the game is more restrictive than before, and whats worse has increased the workload of mod mappers and forced them into building maps that aren't necessarily what they want to build.
When you do that you get mappers who are fed up with modding for Fs19. Some have already quit, others are not happy with the current system and are losing interest.

With less mod mappers out there the less appealing the game is to a larger amount of players. The large appeal of this game to a wide variety of player types has been something that has made this game such a success.

I just wish GIANTS had thought about this before focusing on 1 group of players over all others. They say they try to take the middle ground with there decisions. But the new placeable system was a mistake.

I just hope they learn from this and don't make the same mistake in Fs21.

[niggle44]

Some valid points. But of course you know some people will rant at you anyway !.

[FarmBoss]

billy_roberts_81 "With Fs19 GIANTS decided to focus massively on the "placeable" system."

I think it was a lack of focus that has negatively impacted 19. Giants is bad for half implementing a function and then moving on. I could list many half implemented functions.
They wanted to focus on placeable system, but removed many of the placables from previous versions. Also, placeables now require the ground to be level and will unrealistically adjust the landscape.
It's kind of funny when you think their publisher is Focus, but focus is one thing they lack as a company.

Otherwise I totally agree that they have made it more difficult for modders and players alike.

[Tylercheesey1986]

Yeah it appears that the new emphasis on placeables along with the new difficulty modes is making life very hard for modders who want as many people as possible to enjoy their maps. I'm a fan of the new terrain editing and all the new placeable stuff but it feels not quite right on some maps and I get a lot of guilt and feelings of "wrong" if i tear down someone's map. Maybe we just all asked for to much out of this newest fs instalment expecting GE to become part of the game basically, and this is what happens when you get greedy. All I can say is I love fs and I am ever grateful for all the awesome modders that share their creations with us I think they should make their maps how they want them and maybe giants should give us a flat map and a basic stripped down version GE to build maps for all platforms in the base game if wanting to continue this theme in future

[billy_roberts_81]

Some valid points. But of course you know some people will rant at you anyway !.

[bossmanslim]

I think the placable system is a positive that was poorly implemented by Giants and has yet to be embraced by the mod makers. The system is probably the only reason I continue to play FS19 because most of the pre-made farms are not to my liking; mainly because they aren't realistic.

Where Giants dropped the ball is in they've failed to release an adequate number of placable buildings to support the game in an appropriate manner. All the effort spent on cotton should probably have gone in to placables and cotton moved out to the platinium edition. The same goes for the Anderson DLC in that it should have been some more intricate building systems.

On the other hand, map makers are slowly embracing the system, recognizing that players want to play their way, not the map maker or Giants way. The main issue I see with most new maps is that most maps that I would consider high quality force the player to play a certain way. On the other hand, most maps that give the player lots of options are under developed in many areas (sell points, a town, traffic, too flat). For me, the best map is on that has a small town section, multiple sell points and most of the rest of the map setup to be changed however the player wants.

[billy_roberts_81]

I understand the points your making @bossmanslim , but I feel what your asking is contradictory.

You want map makers to make highly detailed realistic maps that can be altered almost without limit. That would never work as for starters the placeable system will never rival GE so will always be vastly limited in what you can alter ingame.

Also to make every object on the map removable or placeable would require an insane amount of placeable mods. This would just decrease the performance of the game, as it requires more VRAM to process all those mods.

Also the reason a map is higher quality and is finished off with the extra details is because that map maker is not interested in making "Sim City Farms" but realistic, real world environments.

I've yet to see a realistic placeable farm yard. Most look like something out of a mobile game.

I do genuinely think that most players are expecting way too much from the new placeable system. GIANTS never designed or intended it to replace GE, and it never will.

[redglasses]

Most mappers I know or have spoken to have little interest in placeables as they would rather build the farmyard they want in GE.
But with Fs19 this isn't a choice anymore. Mappers HAVE to include it in there maps whether they want to or not.
For starters all the animal husbandries HAVE to be added as placeables into the map. All the animated things like gates, and lights etc have to be added to the map as placeables. Then there is the extra coding needed to assign all the various parts of the farmyard to which of the 3 game modes it will appear in or not. All this is extra coding which you HAVE to do, regardless if you as the mapper want to ever use a single placeable or not.

You realize this isnt true right, look at all the mod maps out right now. Lots of the ones I've checked out have multiple animal pens already on the map

The game modes. It is impossible for a mapper do cater for everyones preference.

I don't understand what you are saying here, it has and will always been impossible for mappers to appeal to everyone

In Fs17 we could the same as this. All we needed was the ability to sculpt terrain and paint foliage etc, ingame.

No, the building system needed work. I'm glad they decided to focus on it in this title as they seemed to clean up the game with this installment.

I don't agree with your post, but I do believe giants need to remove restrictions, or add the place anywhere mod to consoles.

[fenixguy]

I've not messed with the placeables much because I'm not that imaginative and rely on modders to create nice farmyards on their maps. My biggest gripe with Giants is all the useless buildings. Why do we get that nice red barn but can't use it for anything? Why only two types of houses?

I will say that I am very happy that you can sell/move animal pens. I never liked having all three types (now 5) on the map when I only want to farm one or two.

I will also say that what little I've played with it, I love the landscaping feature. We've needed that for so long.

[Deutz man 555]

The worst thing with there placable system is you can only put 2 sheds near 40ft apart not side by side like in fs17

[Tomazius96]

I really like the new placable and terraforming additions to the game. But there is deffinetly some room for improvments. I hope that Giants plans improve this before the new "FS21"

[billy_roberts_81]

You realize this isnt true right, look at all the mod maps out right now. Lots of the ones I've checked out have multiple animal pens already on the map.

I don't understand what you are saying here, it has and will always been impossible for mappers to appeal to everyone.

No, the building system needed work. I'm glad they decided to focus on it in this title as they seemed to clean up the game with this installment.

I don't agree with your post, but I do believe giants need to remove restrictions, or add the place anywhere mod to consoles.

For starters, I wasn't on about the multiple animal pens. Not sure what thats got to do with this.

Yes it has always been impossible to cater for every player type. But now the new game mode system in conjunction with the forced placeable coding has made maps even more limited to various player types.

You mention about removing restrictions... any restrictions are there because the placeable system is restricted and always will be.
There is no way the current game engine could handle all of the game aspects and have a complex program like GE built into the game. It just wouldn't work.

This is what seems so daft you have players expecting to make all these vast amounts of changes to a map with a program that was never designed to do it.

I appreciate you might not be a modder so might have difficulty seeing it from our POV.

But you ask the current mappers who have released maps for Fs19 if they really like the new way of doing stuff.

[gordon861]

As mentioned above I think that the idea of placeables was great but the implementation was half-arsed, and should have been much better handled.

Adding an animal pasture should not require a massive flat square area. Instead I should be able to define an area for the pasture which would support a maximum number of animals based on the area. I should then need to place water/feed facilities within this area to support the number of animals I want to have. The only things that should require flat areas are the buildings, these could either be inside the pasture area or make up part of the fence.

Also, in the existing system there should have been a way to align stuff rather than guesswork.

[bossmanslim]

You want map makers to make highly detailed realistic maps that can be altered almost without limit. That would never work as for starters the placeable system will never rival GE so will always be vastly limited in what you can alter ingame.

Not really, towns and sell points should be fixed with the map, but also placed in such a manner that they aren't in the way of farming. My main issue with how most maps are built is that the fences, hedge rows and farm buildings are not removable other than through GE. If I buy a property with buildings on it, I should be able to remove those buildings AND change the field boundaries how I want. I don't need 3 farm houses that I can't sleep in and 6 sheds that I don't keep equipment in just because I can't knock them down. I use the chair mod for sleeping because most maps have multiple houses on them and the player typically can't sleep in them if they own them.

Also to make every object on the map removable or placeable would require an insane amount of placeable mods. This would just decrease the performance of the game, as it requires more VRAM to process all those mods.

Meh, most maps are copy and pasting houses anyway and have too much stuff on them. If we look at Felsburnn, those elevated towers and random old shacks could be done away with no impact on the map. Most maps have too much stuff on them already and as I have stated, what I am really referring to is the farm buildings and not the residential and commercial buildings that are added for flavor.

Also the reason a map is higher quality and is finished off with the extra details is because that map maker is not interested in making "Sim City Farms" but realistic, real world environments.

Ultimately, the map maker can do whatever they want, but I think in this case less is more especially given the starting options. The maps are not realistic anyway because virtually no farm raises all types of livestock, which most map makers try to put in. Lastly, everyone likes different styles of maps and I can admit that some maps are excellent, but not my cup of tea. There are several maps I think are beautiful and recognize that the map maker spent lots of effort in them, but I'm not going to play them because the hedgerows/fences are not removable, which is a no go for me.

I've yet to see a realistic placeable farm yard. Most look like something out of a mobile game.

Most realistic farm yards look like stuff IRL because they are built over decades as the farm expands rather than over a relatively short time period with basically unrealistic amounts of disposable income. The farm yard on the farm I worked on growing up I would never reproduce in game because it was terrible, that doesn't mean how the yard is configured in game is unrealistic. Most farmers would probably like to have something closer to the game if they had the money, land and time.

I do genuinely think that most players are expecting way too much from the new placeable system. GIANTS never designed or intended it to replace GE, and it never will.

I think there is a happy balance as I've mentioned earlier. Residential, industrial and commercial space should be done in the GE, while agriculture related items should be done in the placable system.

The worst thing with there placable system is you can only put 2 sheds near 40ft apart not side by side like in fs17

You need place anywhere for this to work. For some reason the default boundaries around buildings is unrealistically high.

[FarmerJimbob]

Allowing themselves to be bound by their arbitrary 2-year release schedule was the mistake, not so much the attempt to implement a feature that a large proportion of the player-base was crying out for. But Giants are still a relatively small company experiencing a pretty massive upsurge in player base and user expectations over the past few years, like any company in that situation they will make mistakes.

I agree there are issues with the placeable system but I'd rather have it than not have it as I've learnt how to work through the pitfalls, and I have Place Anywhere.