Seasons Mod

[John Deere 86]

My apologies Guil, I must have missed that rules part, my mistake

[DirectCedar]

What is puzzling to me is that OP has released his own version (and I hope he got permission to do so) of this third-party mod that broke his game... He could have simply said that he had a way to fix it.

You're saying the OP has released his own edited version of Seasons??

This semi-intelligible drama is just getting curiouser and curiouser

[reallogger]

lol. No not Seasons. The other mod that actually broke (but I guess that is a matter of perspective).

[livesea72]

I put very little time into seasons on 17, just couldn't find right combination of map and seasons length but will give it another go after maps get updated and it releases on console.

[FarmBoss]

I have found (my opinion only) that seasons slows an already slow paced game to the point where there's way more downtime than I like.
I decided to uninstall it and use my own rules that I am able to deviate from a bit if I wish. I personally don't have a desire to push snow around, and I don't focus on logging (unless I need to remove a tree or two).

[Nigel]

That is where time rate and season length comes into play. You control how much you have to do and how much downtime you will have.

[muzickmage]

OK. I'm going to begin here by saying that i'm not a fan of the seasons's mod either. IMO, the season's mod (as a whole) doesn't make logical sense. I do appreciate what Realimus is trying to do.... which is add seasons to the game. The major issue that Realimus has to struggle with however when trying to create the perfect mod is the fact that Farming sim (as a base game) isn't setup for the adoption of seasons in the first place. Its a similar idea as creating rotary wheels for a car, when the car wasn't designed for ratary wheels, which encourages a need to redesign the drive train to accept the rotary mod. That's what Realimus is doing. Creating seasons for a game that wasn't designed for seasons, and.... that's going to create issues. Changes, and adaptations to the base game will need to be made. That will of course cause some people to maybe get a bit upset. But I think it would be best for everyone to take a step back and realize that its not easy to make two ideas work together, when those two ideas in question..... aren't initially compatible with each other. The result, there's going to be issues. I try to understand that first, before, and regardless of my opinion of the Season's mod.

As for complaining about the mod, I would suggest communicating directly with Realimus. I recall with the seasons mod for FS17.... I had an issue with the vehicle maintenance cost factor and how it was implemented. I simply found a thread that Realimus was participating on... I posted my complaint trusting Realimus would see and respond (which is what happened) and after a couple pages of Realimus and I going back and forth ... the conversation was over. I haven't addressed that complaint sense. There was no need to.

Though I appreciate the OP complaint.... I don't completely agree with the way it was introduced. For example.... starting a new thread to highlight the complaint wouldn't have been my first plan. IMO, tracking down an already exisiting thread, such as the one supporting/discussing the seasons mod in particular, would have been a better ideas to have the complaint seen, and addressed by, Realimus.

Despite Realimus and I not having the best friendship here, being that i'm not one of their supporters, I will still say, in my experience, that Realimus is generally willing to listen to any arguments, and, I have noticed, a few times in passing, Realimus making changes to the season's mod due to fan feedback. But, like anyone else, you have to fairly meet them half way. I don't think starting a new "rant" thread against them is an example of "fairly meeting them half way". (again, just my opinion).

[DirectCedar]

I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here but I am also genuinely curious.

What major issues do you observe that are due to the interaction of Seasons and the base game? What could any mod author have genuinely done differently to prevent/mitigate/work around these issues that concern you?

From my perspective (and in my opinion) , RM did a fantastic job of building on the base game's potential to create a more realistic simulation, without compromising really any of the fun and good parts of the base game mechanics.

It sounds like your opinion is different than that, which is your right.

A couple other thoughts in response to your post:

If Seasons wasn't built on the foundation of the base game, it could otherwise only exist as a new standalone game. That would potentially be awesome but would require orders of magnitude more work and time and money and risk than creating a mod for a base game that is intentionally designed to be accessible to modders, and for obvious reasons is probably more than a team of volunteer modders is looking to bite off. A mod of this scope is already a massive undertaking; building all the mod's features into an entirely new game would be monolithic. Reference what is happening with "that other game" that rhymes with Mattle and Mops.

No mod or game will ever be "perfect" and I don't think RM or anyone else aims for that. Perfection is often subjective and its pursuit can sometimes lead to endless feature creep. Defining a project's scope and its boundaries and sticking to them is often a bigger contributor to success than achieving "perfection". A mod (or a game or song or painting or book or machine) can be exemplary without being perfect.

Finally, we're talking about a computer game and a mod. Why do we all get so worked up about it ? (This is not referring to you specifically muzick; I mean all of us and every "controversial" thread like this one).

[muzickmage]

I didn't come to this thread to create support for, or insult to, the Season's mod, but, while trying to respect your question, i'll just say this.....

From Giants end of the stick, the game isn't very well setup with ideas that are compatible with seasonal gameplay. Sure, the game can be reworked to somewhat be seasonal tolerent, but that doesn't negate the fact that Gaints hasn't really offered much in the sense of wintery options. Greenhouses that we can use year-round would be a great addition on the part of giants..... and would help resolve one of my complaints against the season's mod.

IMO, Giants saw, back with the fs15 developement that there wasn't much to do in the game between harvest. Then... we only had cows, chickens, and sheep to look after to keep us busy while waiting for the wheat to grow. This likely encouraged their decision to add forestry to the game. A major new area of gameplay. That brings us to today's base game (fs19) that can be reasonably divided into 3 major areas of gameplay:

...... Crops.
...... Animals
...... Forestry

Though the animal, and forestry sections are great to have and play around with, at the same time, they are, what I consider to be, majorly needed ideas to fill in the time gaps between harvests, and field work.

The problem with the season's mod is.... it takes from the game the ability to work the fields.... forcing added gameplay to be placed on the animals and forestry. On the surface, this isn't an issue. But for me, this can be a tad bit frustrating.

When playing the base game, trees on my maps don't last long. With the time in between field work offered by the base game, I usually cut down literally hundreds of trees. I grab the ponse, and 4-5 hours of gameplay later I have over 500 trees cut and laying on the ground. Now my wheat and barley are ready for harvest. Then it's back to the tree work while waiting for the corn to finish growing. After a few IRL days of gameplay, my map is almost treeless.... and i'm stuck with waiting for the planted trees to grow so I can repeat the process. Now what am I supposed to do to help fill in the gaps between field work, when the animals don't take much time to keep updated.

With just one wheat harvest, I have well over a hundred straw bales. It will take me a while to use all of them. A couple hours of gameplay and I will have well over a hundred hay bales. So they're all caught up and organized as well. I guess i'll, I don't know, fill up another silage silo or something. The corn should be done soon right?

With the season's mod, the gameplay is greatly, and maybe arguably, "overwhelmingly" diverted away from the field work, and placed on the forestry section. The problem for me is.... I usually don't have any trees left to cut down while waiting for the seasons to change. I have lots of trees when I first start a new map.... but trust me, those trees won't be standing long.

Its not that I want to rid the map of trees, its more to the point of... what else am I going to do between harvest, when everything else is pretty easy to accumulate and have too much of. As I mentioned. It only takes one wheat harvest to have well over 100 straw bales, which lasts a really long time.

For this particular agrument, I do think greenhouses would nicely help with this issue. Year round greenhouses that we can actually work. They would help divert my attention away from the trees, not only for the base game, but especially when using the season's mod as well.

The only way I was able to get at least some level of entertaining gameplay was to fast forward through the seasons. And that got old fast. I found it difficult to maintain enjoyment of the game when I had to keep fast forwarding through it just to be able to play it.

Overall, I find that the season's mod takes away the ability to play one of the dominating factors in the game itself (the fields), forcing too much emphasis on the other areas of the game that isn't ready to compensate for need to keep extra busy. (unless you are comfortable with that fast forward button).... resulting in too much downtime.

Some people can make it work for them. And that's great. All i'm saying is... the time factor doesn't work well for me.

[Thedebe48]

OK. I'm going to begin here by saying that i'm not a fan of the seasons's mod either. IMO, the season's mod (as a whole) doesn't make logical sense. I do appreciate what Realimus is trying to do.... which is add seasons to the game. The major issue that Realimus has to struggle with however when trying to create the perfect mod is the fact that Farming sim (as a base game) isn't setup for the adoption of seasons in the first place. Its a similar idea as creating rotary wheels for a car, when the car wasn't designed for ratary wheels, which encourages a need to redesign the drive train to accept the rotary mod. That's what Realimus is doing. Creating seasons for a game that wasn't designed for seasons, and.... that's going to create issues. Changes, and adaptations to the base game will need to be made. That will of course cause some people to maybe get a bit upset. But I think it would be best for everyone to take a step back and realize that its not easy to make two ideas work together, when those two ideas in question..... aren't initially compatible with each other. The result, there's going to be issues. I try to understand that first, before, and regardless of my opinion of the Season's mod.

As for complaining about the mod, I would suggest communicating directly with Realimus. I recall with the seasons mod for FS17.... I had an issue with the vehicle maintenance cost factor and how it was implemented. I simply found a thread that Realimus was participating on... I posted my complaint trusting Realimus would see and respond (which is what happened) and after a couple pages of Realimus and I going back and forth ... the conversation was over. I haven't addressed that complaint sense. There was no need to.

Though I appreciate the OP complaint.... I don't completely agree with the way it was introduced. For example.... starting a new thread to highlight the complaint wouldn't have been my first plan. IMO, tracking down an already exisiting thread, such as the one supporting/discussing the seasons mod in particular, would have been a better ideas to have the complaint seen, and addressed by, Realimus.

Despite Realimus and I not having the best friendship here, being that i'm not one of their supporters, I will still say, in my experience, that Realimus is generally willing to listen to any arguments, and, I have noticed, a few times in passing, Realimus making changes to the season's mod due to fan feedback. But, like anyone else, you have to fairly meet them half way. I don't think starting a new "rant" thread against them is an example of "fairly meeting them half way". (again, just my opinion).

Bad take dude.

[muzickmage]

@Thedebe48
….. Are you going to explain why? It would be nice to have the opportunity to understand what your argument is.

[Doc3d]

I think that is one of the upsides to seasons. It slows down gameplay. If you use a chainsaw instead of a ponsse, and manually load your logs after stripping, all while keeping to a 15x sped up time, you would run out of days very quickly, and might find yourself struggling to get everything done before you are needed for the next task. Not everybody’s cup of tea, and I respect that.

I think most of the point with seasons is to make FS more realistic -as in a bit more true to real life, be it good or bad. And I think they have managed to do that in an exceptional way. Of course not everybody is going to like the way it’s done, but maybe the biggest complainers cater to a game style not that rooted in realism in the first place (this comment is not meant for anybody specifically, I mean in general terms)? If so, then seasons is not the right fit and you would be better of disabling the mod and playing the game the way you want.

There are things I’m not a huge fan of with seasons, but for me, the upsides far outweighs the negatives. And it should be respected that not everybody loves it, I just don’t see the point in complaining since nobody is forced to use it. There are hundreds of mods I don’t like in the game, but I don’t go on a crusade telling the world about them, I just ignore them and move on.

[Thedebe48]

@Thedebe48
….. Are you going to explain why? It would be nice to have the opportunity to understand what your argument is.

For one, I really don't understand the 'it slows down gameplay' excuse. You literally have the button to change the time speed whenever you want. You have the ability to speed through days where you don't have work to do. What is so difficult about that?

And second, you are entitled to an opinion, you're allowed to not like the mod, but why rip apart the best mod that has ever come to this game without even having a tangible argument? "A seasons mod (for a farming game) doesn't make logical sense." I really don't think your rotary wheels on a car metaphor applies at all here. You're saying that seasons and a farming simulator game are not compatible with each other? Are you serious? Did you actually read what you typed? Seasons and agriculture are nearly parallel equivalents and they share an analogous significance in the way time passes in a small town. To say that they don't go together is absurd.

Come up with a tangible argument instead of 'I don't like it'.

[Thedebe48]

I just don’t see the point in complaining since nobody is forced to use it.

Louder, for the people in the back!

[muzickmage]

@Doc3d , Thedebe48

Well, yea. I suppose I could cut every tree with a chainsaw. And I could deliver my bales from the field to the barn one bale at a time too. And why just 15x. Why not play at 120x? If I am going to adopt the idea of fast forwarding through the game instead of playing it.... why limit myself to just 15x?

Anyone can fast forward through a game. That doesn't take much skill........

..... I have nothing to do. Wait, I'll hit the fast forward button. WOW, look at all the work I have in front of me here. This game is wicket to keep up with. lol. I don't understand how people run out of things to do with seasons.

Well. Of course people (in general) don't understand. Not when they are constantly fast forward through the game. Let them play the game on 1x like I do. Then come back and tell me their story.

Edit to add:
…. I shouldn't have to constantly fast forward through the game just to be able to play it. I should just be able to play it.