A "healthy" critique of Elm Creek map.

[chedly_farms]

Hey Giants staff,

I just want to really stand up and give you applause for Elm Creek. It is by far the best American styled map you have made. It has a nice feel to it. It reminds me a lot of Griffin Indiana from AJFarmer. With nice hilly terrain to the north and big flat fields in the south. I was exploring over the weekend, and was blown away by the state park. There are a lot of really cool details, and to be honest, you can tell you took a lot of time producing all of the aspects there. Also all of the farm buildings look very cool and very American. Some of these barns look like barns I grew up around.

Here comes my "but". Why did you not make all these barns spread throughout the map, usable? Some of these barns with attached hay silos would have been perfect to be dairy barns on the bottom and had the hay silo's been usable to store loose hay. The white barn on the east side of the map would have been a perfect dairy barn, but it's just scenery. All that detail that you put into creating caves and steps and walkways around the state park. You can explore all of that, but in a Farming game, I can't use all the barns for anything. That is just silly to be honest. Don't get me wrong. I like exploring around the park and campground, but you could have made all the barns, "usable" and you didn't.

Here's to hoping that gets patched or updated.

[fenixguy]

Same, bro... There are so many nice farms I would rather use. In the southeast corner is a nice one and in the northeast corner is another nice one. I like being out in the country, not directly down the road from the dealer. LOL. But anyway... Perhaps this was to keep the slots down? I want to think that, but given how they did the same thing with all previous versions, I have to think it's just Giants doing Giants things.

Still the best vanilla map I've played. Perfect for figuring it all out before moving on.

[alha alha]

I'm fairly new to the FS family, and have been reading up on a lot of the threads here about FS22. One of the things I hear mentioned now and then is this 'slots' business. I get the impression they are limitations to how much 'stuff' you can have in a game/map, and from the back and forth, it seems that there are some major limitations placed upon the game in this regard due to their decision to have one piece of code for all platforms, and that we're working to the lowest common denominator, that being consoles? If this it true, is there a way for us on the PC side of things to modify it to remove that limit without breaking anything, because PC's have the potential to be significantly better in terms of hardware than any console, _especially_ after a few years as time and technology marches forward, and consoles are stuck with the hardware they were released with? I don't think I've seen this question addressed in any of the threads I've read.

[cwattyeso]

The only thing I find to be somewhat worse then Giants putting all these non-functional sheds and barns all over the map, which you can't use when you buy the land, is that they then don't allow you to "Demolish" these buildings and decorations in the construction mode to replace them with functional sheds and barns and other things. That to me would have been a good compromise by Giants, give us maps that look good when travelling around, because they are decorated nicely, but then allow us players to remove those decorations when the time comes, and let us add functional items in their place.

[norfolk farmer]

As well as making them usable they should also be buyable in the build mode as the sheds we have are a vast improvement over 19 but not the best suited to a US map.

[Tiredasagiraffe]

I'm fairly new to the FS family, and have been reading up on a lot of the threads here about FS22. One of the things I hear mentioned now and then is this 'slots' business. I get the impression they are limitations to how much 'stuff' you can have in a game/map, and from the back and forth, it seems that there are some major limitations placed upon the game in this regard due to their decision to have one piece of code for all platforms, and that we're working to the lowest common denominator, that being consoles? If this it true, is there a way for us on the PC side of things to modify it to remove that limit without breaking anything, because PC's have the potential to be significantly better in terms of hardware than any console, _especially_ after a few years as time and technology marches forward, and consoles are stuck with the hardware they were released with? I don't think I've seen this question addressed in any of the threads I've read.

PC does not have the slot limitation, this is something specific to consoles.
If running the game on PC, it is only your PC's hardware that sets any limitation on the game regarding graphics/storage etc.

[chedder_farms]

Opening all the buildings would be a good idea.

[alha alha]

PC does not have the slot limitation, this is something specific to consoles.
If running the game on PC, it is only your PC's hardware that sets any limitation on the game regarding graphics/storage etc.

Ahh, thank you for that information. You (hopefully) learn something new every day!

[alha alha]

Opening all the buildings would be a good idea.

I agree, that would be cool. Is it possibly something a modder could do, take the existing buildings and flesh them out so to speak?

[bossmanslim]

Or, I don't know, make them placables so they can be deleted and replaced if the map maker doesn't want to put in the effort to make the buildings functional?

My biggest issues:

• Not all the land is purchasable and thus there are land section issues where land can be "worked' but cannot be edited with the terrain editor.
• I don't mind the small creeks, but all the structures (bridges, drain tile access, signs, etc.) on the land make expanding the fields over them basically impossible.
• Non-functional sheds, this also goes for the insanely expensive garage that doesn't have functioning garage doors (just plain lazy)

Better than Ravenport by miles, but still has some issues. I should also note that the above are also common problems will all maps, so I'm not surprised.

[Dairydeere]

+1 to the OP, the lack of functional buildings stood out to me as a bit of a letdown, especially with the demolish function

[AgroDude]

The only thing I find to be somewhat worse then Giants putting all these non-functional sheds and barns all over the map, which you can't use when you buy the land, is that they then don't allow you to "Demolish" these buildings and decorations in the construction mode to replace them with functional sheds and barns and other things. That to me would have been a good compromise by Giants, give us maps that look good when travelling around, because they are decorated nicely, but then allow us players to remove those decorations when the time comes, and let us add functional items in their place.

I completely agree! I ended up buying the land next to field 73, flattening it, and building my own farm there. It's looking great!

[AgroDude]

PC does not have the slot limitation, this is something specific to consoles.
If running the game on PC, it is only your PC's hardware that sets any limitation on the game regarding graphics/storage etc.

Sadly, PC games are becoming limited by consoles. It is a trend that has existed for years now, and only set to get worse.

If FS was built for PCs, they wouldn't work on consoles. This whole "slot" nonsense is just one example of the total BS of the organization of consoles in the first place. It's a stupid, false limitation.

[FarmCatJenkins]

Technically, I think, PCS do have a slot limit, or at least a counter...if you go into your savegame file and look in the careerSavegame.xml there is a slot count. Not sure what it's used for though.

[hun3]

I agree with OP and I also must add this is a really well designed map as far as feeling immersed in the environment. Good job devs! I really feel like farming around somewhere in the Midwest in my Deere with John listening to country music. If I have to compare FS22 to 19 release fun factor its day and night.