I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

MrChuck523
Posts: 38
Joined: Tue Mar 12, 2019 2:41 pm

I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by MrChuck523 »

Farming Simulator 22 is the best FS yet, but I am getting a little frustrated trying to find a map...

We have more maps in FS22 than ever before and I am still falling back on Giants Elm Creek or Alien Jim's 2 maps, because they just work without all the glitches and bugs. Admittedly, The Western Wilds and Elm Creek did have minor issues which were quickly updated, but both maps were totally playable on first release.
I spent hours trying to start a new map with great enthusiasm, which quickly faded to troubleshooting mode, which eventually ended in frustration and finally deleting the save game.
Several times I would have windrowers spit out piles grass instead of a windrow. Fields I can't plow or harvest, or even purchase. Invisible collisions... We all know and the list is long.

Today Back Roads County released and I was excited to play as I live in the US and prefer North American maps. I started as Farm Manager and I had to spend just over $14000 to buy the start farm I wanted, leaving me almost no money and NO WHEELS. But there are Collectables I thought.
I play PC and I used the Dev Console to locate the collectables. I enjoy collectables even with the cheat map because It gives me a chance to see the whole map and the money is always helpful for starting out. ("I" want to farm, not work for another farmer!).
Unfortunately, most of the other farms had the collectables INSIDE of Buildings with NO Access because I didn't' own the farm and could not open the doors. I finally cheated money in and purchased all the farms so that I could get the collectables. But I still couldn't get some of them because of a Light trigger or a WorkShop Trigger was overlapping. I had to actually sell the building before collecting the collectable. And we can't sell land with placeables on it so I had to sell everything, which pretty much messed up my whole game.
After about a couple of hours and much frustration I finally got the 99 collectables and I have no idea if the last once is missing or what, but it doesn't appear on the map. I gave up and deleted the saved game. I'll have to wait (and hope) for the update!

We have more maps in FS22 than ever before and it seems that almost every map released is unplayable until the bugs are fixed in some future update.... and often many updates... and weeks or months of waiting.
I have great respect for modders and in no way do I mean to belittle anyone. But as a player that loves Farming Simulator and I "just want to farm", I respectfully ask Giants and all of you wonderful hard working folk in the Modd Mapping Community,
Please.... Do more testing???

Now that I've vented I'll go back to Elm Creek and The Western Wilds......
Honkyfarmer_v1010
Posts: 309
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2022 7:19 pm

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by Honkyfarmer_v1010 »

Aside from your issue with collectibles.....hows the map look?
FTF
MrChuck523
Posts: 38
Joined: Tue Mar 12, 2019 2:41 pm

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by MrChuck523 »

Honkyfarmer_v1010 wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 11:38 pm Aside from your issue with collectibles.....hows the map look?
The map looks great. A couple of production items that can't be sold but that's easy to remedy. Unfortunately I never got to farm because i messed up the map trying to get collectables to buy equipment. I'd rather not have collectables than to not find them or not be able to collect them.
Starting equipment is great too but I liked the other farm better. Farm near center of map.

That New Jersey map that updated yesterday i think, same thing. Collectable at one sell point was unreachable. And I think this was the 2nd update on that map. I liked that map too but I just wish stuff would work.
I will put 100 or 200 hours into a map. But so many times I spend 20 or 30 hours on a map before I discover a major malfunction or bug that becomes a roadblock for me and that just destroys the fun and ambition to continue.
Illinois Farmer
Posts: 4923
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2019 7:34 pm

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by Illinois Farmer »

Why not just start the map, don't worry any tv collectibles and just farm, like your title says. Start on new farmer so you don't have to cheat in money or start in farm manager and cheat on money so you start how you want.
1300 acre farm, finish out just about 10,000 hogs a year, 200 cattle, and xbox one and pc user.
User avatar
ajFarmer
Posts: 461
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2021 5:01 am

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by ajFarmer »

MrChuck523-
Maybe try to reach out to map maker privately and let them know what needs attention, They may not know these problems exist. This will help with all mods
Most maps take hundreds of hours to make and as a solo map maker its extremely difficult to make sure each and everything is working as planned. There is always something overlooked.
Giants spends no more then hour on testing per there mod guidelines and that will never change, So information from the players is invaluable.

I am know way angered at your comments, just trying to help the community with best mods possible.

Edit: Not knocking Giants, they provided the platform and its up the community to have error free mods
MrChuck523
Posts: 38
Joined: Tue Mar 12, 2019 2:41 pm

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by MrChuck523 »

ajFarmer wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2022 12:47 am MrChuck523-
Maybe try to reach out to map maker privately and let them know what needs attention, They may not know these problems exist. This will help with all mods
Most maps take hundreds of hours to make and as a solo map maker its extremely difficult to make sure each and everything is working as planned. There is always something overlooked.
Giants spends no more then hour on testing per there mod guidelines and that will never change, So information from the players is invaluable.

I am know way angered at your comments, just trying to help the community with best mods possible.

Edit: Not knocking Giants, they provided the platform and its up the community to have error free mods
AJ Farmer,
Certainly no disrespect intended here either. The game would be nothing without the maps and mods and I know that hundreds of hours are spent making them.
I am a disabled senior just about able to play the game operate my PC. I'm not on social media and other than an occasional YouTube comment this is the only other forum that I use, and very rarely do use either forum.
FS is nearly the only game I play and I usually play FS 8 to 12 hours a day as I am not able to do much else and I do love the game, having been involved in farming most of my life.

I do apologize in advance if I have offended anyone. It was not my intention. Just an old guy got real frustrated.
AJ Farmer. I put hundreds of hours in on Griffin Ind. FS19 and I am am truly looking forward to your new release for FS22.
I Thank you and All the mod makers.
MrChuck523
Posts: 38
Joined: Tue Mar 12, 2019 2:41 pm

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by MrChuck523 »

Illinois Farmer wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2022 12:42 am Why not just start the map, don't worry any tv collectibles and just farm, like your title says. Start on new farmer so you don't have to cheat in money or start in farm manager and cheat on money so you start how you want.
Illinois Farmer,
Of course you are correct. But something goes out of a person's ambition when things don't work right. I've played maps for many hours earning my way to get cows, only to discover the food trigger was broken and I could not delete the pasture to replace it. Or a new map had too many animal pens and I couldn't place or delete any.
Collectables was just today's example. I guess I didn't word it well. But thank you.
Moses195
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon May 28, 2018 1:19 am

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by Moses195 »

Honkyfarmer_v1010 wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 11:38 pm Aside from your issue with collectibles.....hows the map look?
Lol, welcome to Farming Simulator, I’ve been fighting these problems for 4 years. Just make do or find another map I say. There are so many good maps for 22. I feel your pain cause I am there almost everyday as I test new maps, most of them go into the trash, some go into a save folder, and the better ones get to stay in my mods folder. I farm about 200 hours/month. Yes, I am retired and live 1/4 of my life in FS. I used to look for the perfect map but that soon ended. I still don’t know how to use the giants editor yet. If I can’t modify a map to suit me I just trash it. When an update comes about I try it again. I only like large fields and use large equipment. Let courseplay do all the work. I tend the combines and other duties while they fill back up. Everybody plays differently I’m sure. I still find FS most relaxing of all games.
Illinois Farmer
Posts: 4923
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2019 7:34 pm

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by Illinois Farmer »

MrChuck523 wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2022 1:52 am
Illinois Farmer,
Of course you are correct. But something goes out of a person's ambition when things don't work right. I've played maps for many hours earning my way to get cows, only to discover the food trigger was broken and I could not delete the pasture to replace it. Or a new map had too many animal pens and I couldn't place or delete any.
Collectables was just today's example. I guess I didn't word it well. But thank you.
I get it being frustrated when things don't work, but maybe everything else on this map works besides the collectibles. It wood be ashamed to miss out on a good map for something, in my opinion, that doesn't need to be in a farming simulator game. The collectibles should have died in 17.
1300 acre farm, finish out just about 10,000 hogs a year, 200 cattle, and xbox one and pc user.
Mwal
Posts: 3270
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2017 4:59 pm

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by Mwal »

The best thing you can do is test out all the mods you download in a separate save to make sure everything functions properly without investing a bunch of time into them. There’s tons of different content creators at tons of different levels making stuff for free, there’s going to be differences. It’s best to report the issue and move on rather than rant. You say you don’t have social media which I know several here who don’t for no other reason than this game, myself included. If it’s that important to you that you came here to complain about the lack of testing, you could have signed up to Facebook searched out the creator and reported the issue in less time than it took to write up your complaint here. Something else to try is to just not download the map until it’s had an update or two. It’s quite literally the testing you’re looking for just that you will have to resist downloading until the update.
Honkyfarmer_v1010
Posts: 309
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2022 7:19 pm

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by Honkyfarmer_v1010 »

Moses195 wrote: Sat Aug 13, 2022 3:15 am
Honkyfarmer_v1010 wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 11:38 pm Aside from your issue with collectibles.....hows the map look?
Lol, welcome to Farming Simulator, I’ve been fighting these problems for 4 years. Just make do or find another map I say. There are so many good maps for 22. I feel your pain cause I am there almost everyday as I test new maps, most of them go into the trash, some go into a save folder, and the better ones get to stay in my mods folder. I farm about 200 hours/month. Yes, I am retired and live 1/4 of my life in FS. I used to look for the perfect map but that soon ended. I still don’t know how to use the giants editor yet. If I can’t modify a map to suit me I just trash it. When an update comes about I try it again. I only like large fields and use large equipment. Let courseplay do all the work. I tend the combines and other duties while they fill back up. Everybody plays differently I’m sure. I still find FS most relaxing of all games.
I'm not sure if you meant to quote me or not based on your message response. I've learned there's no "perfect" map and to just try and find the one that suits me the best. Bloomfield looked promising but the ai driving doesnt work well. I'm thinking stone. Valley and if all else fails I know I enjoyed Griffin on 19. It's a trial and error but thanks to increased data limit on 22 I can at least have all the mods I want and multiple maps. 19 I had so many mods I could only have 1 map. If I wanted to try a new map i had to delete and hope I liked the new map.
FTF
LittleWatt
Posts: 430
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2022 2:00 am

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by LittleWatt »

MrChuck523 wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 11:32 pm Farming Simulator 22 is the best FS yet, but I am getting a little frustrated trying to find a map...

We have more maps in FS22 than ever before and I am still falling back on Giants Elm Creek or Alien Jim's 2 maps, because they just work without all the glitches and bugs. Admittedly, The Western Wilds and Elm Creek did have minor issues which were quickly updated, but both maps were totally playable on first release.
I spent hours trying to start a new map with great enthusiasm, which quickly faded to troubleshooting mode, which eventually ended in frustration and finally deleting the save game.
Several times I would have windrowers spit out piles grass instead of a windrow. Fields I can't plow or harvest, or even purchase. Invisible collisions... We all know and the list is long.

Today Back Roads County released and I was excited to play as I live in the US and prefer North American maps. I started as Farm Manager and I had to spend just over $14000 to buy the start farm I wanted, leaving me almost no money and NO WHEELS. But there are Collectables I thought.
I play PC and I used the Dev Console to locate the collectables. I enjoy collectables even with the cheat map because It gives me a chance to see the whole map and the money is always helpful for starting out. ("I" want to farm, not work for another farmer!).
Unfortunately, most of the other farms had the collectables INSIDE of Buildings with NO Access because I didn't' own the farm and could not open the doors. I finally cheated money in and purchased all the farms so that I could get the collectables. But I still couldn't get some of them because of a Light trigger or a WorkShop Trigger was overlapping. I had to actually sell the building before collecting the collectable. And we can't sell land with placeables on it so I had to sell everything, which pretty much messed up my whole game.
After about a couple of hours and much frustration I finally got the 99 collectables and I have no idea if the last once is missing or what, but it doesn't appear on the map. I gave up and deleted the saved game. I'll have to wait (and hope) for the update!

We have more maps in FS22 than ever before and it seems that almost every map released is unplayable until the bugs are fixed in some future update.... and often many updates... and weeks or months of waiting.
I have great respect for modders and in no way do I mean to belittle anyone. But as a player that loves Farming Simulator and I "just want to farm", I respectfully ask Giants and all of you wonderful hard working folk in the Modd Mapping Community,
Please.... Do more testing???

Now that I've vented I'll go back to Elm Creek and The Western Wilds......
I agree. I’m not a modder, nor do I know anything about it’s complex nature, but as a consumer, I would prefer more testing. I would hate to see modders going the direction of big companies where consumers end up as testers. Release now, fix later approach is so frustrating. Unfortunately, it’s the way things are going. Sosnovka is a great example. Where did it go? Nowhere to be found less than 24 hours of release. Does that mean a catastrophic failure somewhere? If so, how did it get through QA/QC? I don’t know.

Vent away, I say.
chaseydog
Posts: 532
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2014 6:32 pm

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by chaseydog »

Having released a map of my own in FS17 I can attest to the challenge of creating something that is completely free of issues. My map was in development for 9 months, the last 6 of which was actively played, and streamed, on a multiplayer server. There were 6 or so of us regularly on the server, and another 3 or 4 who would join in from time to time. Each week we would find another issue, I’d roll out an updated version, and we would test further. Eventually the list of issues was exhausted and we all agreed the map was good to go. Within a week of its release some one contacted me to say the bale trigger wasn’t working on the sheep farm. We had tested animals fairly extensively, but had always dumped grass into the feed trough, rather than just dumping n entire bale. The problem with testing is that your testing is inevitably constrained by the play style of your testers.

Adding testers to the pool might lead to more varied play but it also increases the chance of someone leaking the mod before the mod maker feels the map is good to go. To further complicate the process, map creation is often a dynamic process. One of my tester would make a suggestion, of how the map could be improved. I’d incorporate the change, and we’d test it out, but there was always the chance that the change would adversely affect something that had been tested long ago. Increasing the size of the test pool only adds to the chaos.

For better or worse we have to accept that the initial release period for a mod is a beta phase, and while I understand there’s some frustration in this, expecting perfection out the gate is unrealistic. If you’d rather not be part of this process than it may be in your best interest to wait a few weeks until after a map has been released before you invest.

This was not written as a condemnation of anything that’s been said in this thread but only to provide some perspective from someone whose been down this road before
LittleWatt
Posts: 430
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2022 2:00 am

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by LittleWatt »

chaseydog wrote: Mon Aug 15, 2022 7:47 pm Having released a map of my own in FS17 I can attest to the challenge of creating something that is completely free of issues. My map was in development for 9 months, the last 6 of which was actively played, and streamed, on a multiplayer server. There were 6 or so of us regularly on the server, and another 3 or 4 who would join in from time to time. Each week we would find another issue, I’d roll out an updated version, and we would test further. Eventually the list of issues was exhausted and we all agreed the map was good to go. Within a week of its release some one contacted me to say the bale trigger wasn’t working on the sheep farm. We had tested animals fairly extensively, but had always dumped grass into the feed trough, rather than just dumping n entire bale. The problem with testing is that your testing is inevitably constrained by the play style of your testers.

Adding testers to the pool might lead to more varied play but it also increases the chance of someone leaking the mod before the mod maker feels the map is good to go. To further complicate the process, map creation is often a dynamic process. One of my tester would make a suggestion, of how the map could be improved. I’d incorporate the change, and we’d test it out, but there was always the chance that the change would adversely affect something that had been tested long ago. Increasing the size of the test pool only adds to the chaos.

For better or worse we have to accept that the initial release period for a mod is a beta phase, and while I understand there’s some frustration in this, expecting perfection out the gate is unrealistic. If you’d rather not be part of this process than it may be in your best interest to wait a few weeks until after a map has been released before you invest.

This was not written as a condemnation of anything that’s been said in this thread but only to provide some perspective from someone whose been down this road before
Great insight. A question: when you were testing, did you give anyone a specific item to test? You mentioned there was a fill trigger issue with bales. This was playstyle related, but had a person been directed to test that issue, it would’ve been discovered before release.

Yes, there’s a trust factor when allowing for testers. I’ll give you a perspective from an author point of view. You must have them. You must have people you trust read your drafts. Without a close group of people you trust, you simply can’t make a quality product. People who will bust your chops when things are disjointed. People who will praise your work when it’s done well. People who understand what you’re trying to convey and will to tell you that it isn’t working. Without those readers grabbing you by the collar and shaking your fillings out, your project won’t be at its best. Authors don’t get a second chance to make it right after publication. Once that project hits the shelves, that’s it. Sometimes edits still get missed. But these are often post editing mistakes like misspelled words, or the printing process going all wonky. Still without those special readers, your project doesn’t make it out of the mens room.

Creating a mod can’t be easy. But there’s a reason people do it. To create something. Or take on a challenge. Or whatever. To put forth something others aren’t doing. No matter what the reason is, just like authors, you must know your audience. If I’m writing a childrens book, I know I can’t include overly complex adult ideals or opinions. I must be able to think like children. I can still use adult opinions as long as I place them in the context of an appropriate age bracket. A perfect example is “The Hunger Games” series. Heavy adult themes written for a young adult mind.

Map makers have the single hardest modding responsibilities. Because you must think like other players. Your biases and playstyles must be left at the door. A modded tractor doesn’t have as many variables as maps do. I’m not saying tractor mods are easy, but we know tractors only have a handful of jobs compared to the hundreds of jobs maps must do. Yes, there will be some players who intentionally try driving their tractors on the roof, but that isn’t something a modder has to consider. Whereas the use of bales would definitely be on the checklist.

Food for thought is all. No attack intended.
chaseydog
Posts: 532
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2014 6:32 pm

Re: I just want to Farm! Back Roads County and other maps...

Post by chaseydog »

LittleWatt wrote: Mon Aug 15, 2022 10:02 pm
A question: when you were testing, did you give anyone a specific item to test? You mentioned there was a fill trigger issue with bales. This was playstyle related, but had a person been directed to test that issue, it would’ve been discovered before release.
Testing was never that formalized. We would often focus on a specific aspect of the game, BGA, cows, crops, but there was never a defined set of testing criteria nor was anyone assigned specific tasks.

I’ve only done the one map, so my experience may differ from others, but I’m guessing that most testing is simply play on the map and provide feedback if something’s not right.

A formalized checklist sounds like an option until you realize that creating those tests requirements is a bit impractical.
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