Ouch: Quite a game balance breaking exploit!

[Frag]

Hi guys,

I saw few short discussion about this after discovering it, but to me it seems that it is quite a balance breaking exploit.

Briefly, you can harvest all the map without spending a dime.

1. You check when your neighbor field is ready to harvest, so they took care of everything (even contracting you to maintain it).
2. When it is ready to harvest you buy the field. Let's say a 125 000$.
3. You harvest the field.
4. You sell it back for the exact same amount on the spot. 125 000$

So you just got the field crop for free.

Quite a game balance break now since you could live from everyone field for free.

An easy fix from Giant would be to add the value of the crop to the field.

Example:

- The cultivated land (without crop) has a value of 125 000$
- Let's say a full crop of Canola is worth 20 000$ on that field (when fully grown at 100%)
- Then if you buy the field when it is ready to be harvested, you would pay 145 000$ (land + crop value)
- Or If the crop is grown at 33%, you pay 125 000$ for the field + (33% of 20 000$) which would be : 125 000$ + (20 000$ x 0.33) = 131 600$

What do you guys think? Some people will say that you could do this in real life but the reality is that there is a chance that you would not be able to sell the land back. You would also have to pay all kind of fees (welcome tax, notary, real estate agency) which would make the move really risky.

Please Giants fix this. Knowing that it can be done is quite a game breaking hack.

Depending of the forum members feedback, I will report it as a bug.

Thanks!

ps: I did this with grass to feed my animals. I did not check yet if it's the same behavior for all kinds of crops.

[Goose66]

Pretty sure most people know about that exploit. Hardly game breaking. Just don't use the exploit.

[Farming is awesome]

I like it how it is because in the game you can't buy crops off of fields like in real life

[FarmBoss]

Your suggested fix would be perfect. Surprised it didn't occur to them during development, QA, or during any one of their bug fix patches.

[Alagos]

Dont think that fix is that 'easy'. The idea is simple, sure, but even implementing these tiny things is more complicated than it looks.

[FarmBoss]

Dont think that fix is that 'easy'. The idea is simple, sure, but even implementing these tiny things is more complicated than it looks.

How about just simple math. Base price plus 50% for fertilized, and double the price for planted.
Sell for base price.
Something is better than nothing.

[stevoxsi]

Field flipping. Been loads of people doing it since the start.

[hugassi]

In real life, land is sold for more than what was bought by the investment without having a product ready to harvest and in this sense we even have no profit in buying and selling but only in harvest, perhaps it is not at all wrong if seen as a type of contract.
I do this sometimes, but I only sell again after I have again cultivated, fertilized, and sown to make him ready for another harvest, never just for the product I took from him.

[eight_lugs]

No easy dev controls is game breaking lol

[Frag]

Thing is with game exploit is that it was commonly proven to kill the interest of people in games. When the mechanic of the game can be bypassed, then at some at some point people will use it to get out of a tough situation, therefore completely killing the game challenge, therefore the idea of what a game is in the first place.

In this situation, you would do WAY more money to buy land/sell land/harvest than you would do maintaining, plowing, seeding, fertilizing the field ...therefore just sending those steps in the "doing it is optional and useless" box.

Even though you tell yourself to not do it, you know its there ...

[Illinois Farmer]

It is simple don't do it if you don't want to. It has been there since the beginning and I have never used it. I can't believe you just posted this in technical support. It isn't that big of deal to have it in the game.

[iwan073]

Pretty sure everyone knew about this short after the game was released.

If you want to cheat, use this exploit. Otherwise, don’t.

But, if you do want to cheat I’d recommend downloading the Government Subsidy mod. This also gives you all the money you want, without harvesting anything

So this exploit is no more of a game changer than that mod is

[Frag]

It is simple don't do it if you don't want to. It has been there since the beginning and I have never used it. I can't believe you just posted this in technical support. It isn't that big of deal to have it in the game.

I do not agree with you here. We are not talking about a mod here, but the core of the game itself. Th economy of the game system is quite broken there.

If you would play GTA 5 and a bug would make you invulnerable by simply wearing a pair of jeans ... would you say "Yeah its there since the beginning, just don't wear the jeans if you do not want to".

This is a game balance issue.

There is also a huge difference between downloading a mod that would cheat for you, and a cheat that is within the game itself ...without entering a special command.

[Rasping rabbit]

So I am assuming that you aren’t planning on doing it as it bothers you so much? So it doesn’t affect you?

I haven’t done it for the reasons you have given. I have used the subsidy mod a few times, generally to setup the farm how I want it, terraforming and such.

And if others choose to use this ‘exploit’ then surely that’s down to them how they play their game and it doesn’t affect you anyway.

Failing to see the issue here. It’s been a part of the game since launch, and people still appear to be playing it.

[Illinois Farmer]

I do not agree with you here. We are not talking about a mod here, but the core of the game itself. Th economy of the game system is quite broken there.

If you would play GTA 5 and a bug would make you invulnerable by simply wearing a pair of jeans ... would you say "Yeah its there since the beginning, just don't wear the jeans if you do not want to".

This is a game balance issue.

There is also a huge difference between downloading a mod that would cheat for you, and a cheat that is within the game itself ...without entering a special command.

You do realize you don't have to do it if you don't want to. About your Gta 5 logic, if you want to die then yeah, don't wear the jeans. It is a video game. It is very simple to not buy the land, harvest the crop and sell it back, but if that's what you want to do with your gameplay then go ahead and do it.