Is anyone still playing On FS17?

pingu
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by pingu »

@Blademaster

I bought FS17 in Dec 2016. Don't know the exact date it arrived on macOS, but it was probable only a few weeks old at that time. Maybe one minor update had been released. And there were zero issues with it for me. Controllers worked perfectly. Sound, graphics, etc. -- a little bit better than in FS15 and no issues. Things in the game worked, and didn't felt like half-finished and/or untested. I remember seeing one glitch with a one of the standard tipper waggons. When filling it, it looked like the crop went straight through down to the ground. But it did in fact fill up. That's all. Of course, I didn't like everything in the game. I had wished things to be different (menus, HUD, missions, etc.). But no issues. And today -- 25 months later -- the application (despite the tons of mods installed) is still rock-solid and never crashes.

FS19 was a mess the minute the d/l was finished and the application didn't even launch because I had my usual FS17 controllers connected...

I'm also sad and a little worried about the disappointment I see in the modding community both here and on other forums. For me, this game is totally dependent on them to be anything more than just another machine-sandbox game.


@Jagtractor

I just expected a working piece of software that at least had the same functionality as FS17 (like, controllers working). Maybe that is too much to expect from a commercial piece of software?
<-- FS17 on an iMac 27" playing Lone Oak Farm and The Western Shore -->
Patrick73
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by Patrick73 »

I think the problem is our mindset especially me being a console player,yes I don’t like somethings as I’ve said but going from FS15 with one map and no mods to fs17 with two maps and mods it was a big improvement. I think one reason it doesn’t feel like a massive improvement is because we’ve now gone from a game with mod maps and seasons to a basic game again. I’m sure with time it will improve. As for mods being released the timeline isn’t much different if you compare the release dates of fs17 maps...first one 6-7 weeks after release of fs17 and the second map didn’t come out until February ( for console)
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Jagtractor
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by Jagtractor »

pingu wrote: Tue Jan 15, 2019 5:58 pm
I just expected a working piece of software that at least had the same functionality as FS17 (like, controllers working). Maybe that is too much to expect from a commercial piece of software?
A perfectly working piece of software is a lot to expect from a less than 2 year life cycle. I wouldn't be surprised that not all hands were on deck for 19 till one year from launch.
I personally have never had a game that crashes more than this one. If fact this game has crashed more than any other game I've ever played on console all combined. That said, i keep coming back and also, Thank god for autosave

I bought fs17 around January. I didn't get it right at launch cause I didn't have a ps4 at the time. I don't remember too much about it cause I wasn't one of the firsts. But i do Remember some complaining. Combine augers would never retract when hired help was going. And they never fixed the fact the the hired help just could NOT finish a field. But i remember a lot of it was mostly pc players cause they didn't want to give up their mods from 15 to go to 17 (history repeats i guess)

This time around I think the console players have been spoiled now. We've never had to deal with a total reset like the pc players have been dealing with for years across multiple games. The console guys (not all, but the select loud few) aren't liking this transition. Some respectfully and others not so much.
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Patrick73
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by Patrick73 »

^^ agreed that was my point, we were spoiled last time around... still there is always ace combat vr to keep me busy 😁
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Jagtractor
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by Jagtractor »

Yeah. If i get frustrated enough I'll go on my pc and play some PUBG or Ark. But the farmlands always call me home
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BulletBill

Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by BulletBill »

I think anyone actually open minded would agree that many aspects of FS19 were unfinished on release and still are.

(For example the new placeable system being released without the ability to sculpt or change the terrain ingame, 50% of a new feature is only ok if that 50% works without the other 50%)

FS17 never felt like that, even from day one. That could be put down to the less drastic changes GIANTS have tried to make to the game.

(The new graphics lighting, dynamic skies, new placeable system with ingame terrain sculpting etc)

One the one hand it is commendable that GIANTS have tried to advance the game, but on the flip side that is only going to have a good outcome if you get it right or close to alright.

Everything about FS19 feels rushed and even 2 months after release it still feels like not much has changed since release.

FS17 was very different regarding luadoc availability, modding support from GIANTS to the modders, base game stability, even GIANTS Editor stability compared to FS19.

As of now we are still on a BETA version of GE 2 months after release. That in its self shows how swamped GIANTS must be for that not to have been fixed and finalized by now.

FS17 was released end of October 2016 but by Xmas week you had 3 full mod maps out on console. Chellington (Oxygendavid), Lossberg (Niggles/Vertex Design) and myself with CPF.

Then again it helped that many of GIANTS were helping us with support and working with us to fix any issues to get these out for console. They had even contacted a few modders before the release of FS17.

Again this time round I think they genuinely didn't have the time.

Maybe they just tried to do too much in such a short space of time.

It really does make you question whether they need to look at there business model and see if it could sustain a 3 or 4 year development instead.
Personally having that sort of stability would help modders. As in all previous versions it takes until usually the 2nd year before the best made mods come out.
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chedly_farms
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by chedly_farms »

I feel people are being too dramatic as to how bad 19 actually is. But I will agree with BB that the game was rushed. No doubt about it. There is no way the terraforming feature only took 2 weeks to come up with and put in a patch for. It was supposed to be in the main release. And the fact that that was rushed or missed release date means everything else didn't get the proper time it needed for developement and testing. That being said, there is nothing no one can do about that now, except be patient and wait for Giants to test and fix things.
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Patrick73
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by Patrick73 »

One thing I misunderstood was the buying your own farm, I thought several farms would be available....basefarms like arable,cows,Sheep or pigs. Buy one and then start
pingu
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by pingu »

I have seen many comments in this forum since the release, saying that people that criticize FS19 were expecting too much from GIANTS. They are on a tight schedule, they don't have a huge workforce, they release on many platforms, and so on... I understand that. But in the end it's their decision what to do. They are the only ones that can assess their resources and time available for what they want to do.

I was disappointed with the quality of the product on release, all the changes that (to me) seems random and haphazard. Like sound. What was wrong with it in FS17? I think it is good -- as good I think it needs to be in a farming simulator game (not farm machine simulator game). In fact, right now I hear really nice sound from the tractor and the sowing machine on gaming iMac behind my back while a worker are sowing canola on field 43 at Lone Oak. But one minute into a tractor in FS19 I was like "what's wrong with the sound...?". And I don't seem to be alone in that... It's like all that matters are 'better' graphics/sound and more brand names, and that a release must be a surprise for us to buy it. That's fine, but there seems to be such a devoted player community that don't just play it as a sandbox-game 15 minutes at the time in their TV sofa. Just look at all the mods for more realistic gameplay. That says something to me about how the game can be advanced. I lack a more open communication from them on the road-map for the future. What do they plan? What do we as players think?

Don't get my wrong. I appreciate what they are doing. I love the fact that a developer is so into such a unique and nerdy game like a farming simulator. And I of course thank them for releasing it as a proper macOS app on the Mac App Store. I gladly pay what they want. :) I understand the need for a new graphics engine (?). Although I have been programming on and off for 35 years, I'm not that knowledgeable about games. But I trust them to know what needs to be done to go further and evolve the game.

But...

If the resources are swamped, then do a staggered release for the different platforms. Yes, it would not be this big exciting release day to celebrate. But I would rather have waited 2-3 months for the macOS version (probably the version with least priority) to arrive in the Mac App Store if that would have meant a more polished and tested product.

FS is a complex game. They should have released a beta last summer. A simple little map so that players could have seen the new graphics and sound 'for real', give feedback on the terraforming stuff, confirm that game controllers worked, etc. Evaluated things that worked in FS17 but for some reason hade to be redone for FS19. Now everything seemed to have been treated like 'bugs' in November. I for one can't understand how all these massive issues with controllers (such as the Saitek/Logitech farm wheel/panel) could go undetected in their own testing...

Look at the number of new amazing mods still coming to FS17 almost two years after its release last year. I may be wrong, but I think many would have accepted another year until this big new version just to have a more finished and polished product. GIANTS could have released new stuff for FS17 to keep us happy -- stuff that gave us a taste of what to come. Maybe they could have used FS17 as a testbed for gameplay related stuff to get it more right?

I do not make mods and is too uninformed about the process. But what BulletBill wrote is interesting. For this type of game with (in my opinion) such an emphasis on modding, having a good relationship with modders (providing tools, documentation, support) is very important. Hopefully the issues are due to lack of resources and plain oversight.

In the end I play this game both because I'm a certified machinery nerd *and* because the whole process of simulating running a farm is fascinating. It can be a never-ending story with unpredictability and surprises all the way. For this I need realism in terms of gameplay. I hope FS19 will have that one day. Then I can (hopefully) live with the weird graphics and sound.
<-- FS17 on an iMac 27" playing Lone Oak Farm and The Western Shore -->
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Massey44
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by Massey44 »

I've put about 150 hours into FS19 so far and today I decided to load up FS17 today just to refresh my memory. Another reason for this decision to play FS17 was that I've never really had enough time to justify using the seasons mod, in one sense because I thought I'd be bored with all the downtime, so I thought I'd finally give that a go at last. Now before release I hadn't played FS17 for about 3 months because I was hooked on a survival sim game.

I was personally very excited about FS19 in some part due to the hype, the fact the game was new but since then some of the glossy veneer has worn off a bit for me, but please don't misunderstand me I do still enjoy it. To an extent I felt the new lighting looks good too but it depends entirely on weather (tends to look best on cloudy days) and is guilty of being a bit overdone in the bloom department. At times it can look a bit too post apocalyptic and reminds me of leaving the vault in the Fallout games. Of course it is nice to have volumetric clouds but I personally don't feel they compare to the beautiful skyboxes on a modded map such as Lone Oak. In a way the lighting system in FS19 feels a bit too cartoony, a touch too fake. The day/night transition also still looks extremely sloppy, almost as if someone is flicking a light switch which I find very jarring in immersion terms. It also doesn't get especially dark at night either.

I really liked some of the improvements of FS19 such as the sharper and more detailed textures, the ambient sounds, the ground response and the way the cab bounces around. Lime is also a nice feature and I love the improved vehicle lights and interiors. The vehicle preview is fabulous and very useful. The weed system is still a mess and yes I have the newest version of Steam which was apparently fixed but when switched on makes an absolute mess of the AI owned fields. I felt the FS19 maps looked much better too in terms of overall design even though I found Ravenport to be a disappointment, largely because the map feels like a mish mash of different American states. Sadly these maps didn't play nicely with the new placeable system on release day and still don't in some respects. This system was definitely a good idea but the implementation was initially flawed, both in terms of the lack of a wide variety of useful items and the absence of the much needed landscaping feature. Of course the console users out there still don't even have placeable trees for goodness sake. In fairness to the devs and the likelihood that Focus probably told Giants to rush FS19 to the stores for Xmas we did get the landscaping feature in the end. The thing is having taken a glance at some of the new maps in development very few of them seem to be catering to that system so I'm left wondering whether it was worth it at all since quite a few map makers seem to be making maps the old FS17 way with static farms which seems like a step backwards.

What did bug me on release day was the messed up controllers, with inverted Y-axis and while I got used to it something as straightforward as controller support should really have been fixed well before release.

As for finally making my own farm and designing it exactly how I wanted without learning how to use the editor and apart from the fact that I need a mod to make grass grow back, I'm happy enough with it. I do think a lot of the objects have too large a footprint and the collision boxes are a bit excessive which plays havoc when you have limited space. Sure as a PC owner I could download the place anywhere mod but console owners don't have that option.

Ground textures although certainly more detailed don't blend well and I can see this being a pain to deal with for any map modder. I also think the FS19 trees look poor for some reason. I don't know if it's the shapes, the LOD, or the way the foliage textures react to the new lighting, but they seem to lack depth/volume. I downloaded a UK map which was on FSUK for a bit but then disappeared for certain reasons, but the trees and hedges just looked terrible and from my perspective it made the map seem way more dated. I can totally understand now why some map modders don't want to redo their old maps if they notice the quality won't match up. That's got to be pretty disheartening and would certainly put me off if I actually had the talent for it.

Finally lets talk about the engine sounds. To begin with I thought some of them were okay, they're noisier certainly but I find the volume balance is off because after a certain amount of time playing they give me a headache. They have next to no acceleration sounds, they hardly whine under load, and it's as if many of them are permanently in idle mode. Hard to believe the devs intended them to be this way. In cab it seems every manufacturer apparently now fit their vehicles with double glazing because you can hardly hear the engine at all. Compare that to FS17 and I'm driving around in my MF 7700 today and the pitch changes, you can hear the roar as it accelerates, not to mention all the little hydraulic hisses or the fact that when I turn the engine off the Massey makes this awesome rattling sound. As others have said this really feels immersive. I don't feel that way about FS19 engine sounds which to me often sound like hair dryers or Flymo lawnmowers. The noise distance is also really odd because the sound level is consistent in FS17 no matter how far away the camera is from the vehicle. Another oddity is that you can't hear any ambient sounds in the cab when the engine is switched off.

Anyway that's my two cents and at the end of the day imho FS19 is far from a bad game. It is still very new and maybe after two years of mods everyone will be completely happy with it. Having said that there's still plenty of reasons to play FS17 and I plan to continue to play both as the mood takes me.
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by Attack Wave »

I can’t stand FS19. So like myself, quite a lot of people revolted back to FS17. Mainly because the game isn’t broken. Call me a “moaner” or whatever, but I’ve been gaming for around 27yrs, and in that time, I’ve never witnessed so much hype towards a game title only for it to be the complete opposite. The sheer amount of gaming issues, rendering, lag, and errors I’ve seen on FS19 was a pure and utter joke, and when the patches/ updates rolled out, they fixed nothing.

Then, whilst the game is broken, Giants start rolling out “mods” which are just previous game vehicles - Why? Fix the game.
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thumbwiz
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by thumbwiz »

Attack Wave wrote: Wed Jan 16, 2019 7:50 pm
I'm like you, a seasoned gamer. Well times have changed for the good and bad.
The bad: Games get released with little testing and some content held back so it can be sold via DLC. Younger players have come to accept this, and any moaning from us will get us the troll title.

The good: Games can be patched for bugs and DLC. Some companies will take advantage of this by keeping their title fresh for longer, as long as they're not in a resell loop.
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Patrick73
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by Patrick73 »

I tried playing again tonite and after 5 mins I said to my self I can’t play this ****! What the hell giants were thinking when they released this tripe I’ll never know! The pre release streams by the carefully selected sycophants left more questions than answers and now we know why. While I’m on a rant the maps are garbage,how can a team of developers at work for a year not come up with something better than that when someone makes better in their spare time after a days work and after tea as their hobby
Lindydanny
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by Lindydanny »

So, the new game mechanics kept me mostly happy for a couple months. I like the weeds and lime addition to the harvest cycle. I like the addition of cotton and oats (good variety). I like the better suspension physics. There are so many things to like...

But then there is the rest. The game is clunky. Graphics are horrible (mostly due to draw distance). Sound is worse (even with all the hype on Giants going to get fresh sound files). Shadows are jumpy. Frame rates are jumpy. There are bugs that teleport equipment to god knows where. The new maps are trashy. Dynamic traffic is one way and worse than ever. Helpers are randomly doing donuts in the fields. Crashing games. Corrupted saves...

Bottom line is Giants released a potato. Maybe it's all peachy for some people, but for most it's a potato. FS19 should not have been allowed to drop into stores incomplete and as buggy as it is.

And if we want to play the whole PC master race thing, fine. I'll agree that FS19 should not have come to console. At least not with some significant optimization for consoles. And not from original PC release day.

This morning I went back to FS17. It is beautiful by comparison. If only those gameplay mechanics were some how simply ported to FS17... We could have had something beautiful.
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hun3
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Re: Is anyone still playing On FS17?

Post by hun3 »

I went back to 17 after putting some pretty good amount of time into 19. For me the gameplay elements like seasons course play GPS are game changer. Not to mention by now all FS 17 maps and mods are tested and work as intended. There are so many different ways you can play 17 maps with really creative mods. To me its just so much more fun. Not try to be sarcastic but it almost seems 19 will be ready when 21 will be ready to release.
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