GIANTS focus on the Placeable system for Fs19 was a mistake.

[hugassi]

with pros and cons the truth is that I have never liked a game as much as this one or the previous one and for the respect of the work of the modders I always start at the first level to try to play the way they imagine it giving little by little personal touches in certain things that just like to change.

[redglasses]

For starters, I wasn't on about the multiple animal pens. Not sure what thats got to do with this.

Yes it has always been impossible to cater for every player type. But now the new game mode system in conjunction with the forced placeable coding has made maps even more limited to various player types.

You mention about removing restrictions... any restrictions are there because the placeable system is restricted and always will be.
There is no way the current game engine could handle all of the game aspects and have a complex program like GE built into the game. It just wouldn't work.

This is what seems so daft you have players expecting to make all these vast amounts of changes to a map with a program that was never designed to do it.

I appreciate you might not be a modder so might have difficulty seeing it from our POV.

But you ask the current mappers who have released maps for Fs19 if they really like the new way of doing stuff.

You talked about animal pens in the first post in this topic, I was referring to maps that have animal pens pre placed on the map, they dont need to be added into the map as a placable.

I argue directly against your second point, this new placable system makes it easier for players to get what they want, especially console player who don't have GE to help them. Back with the old placable system you couldn't change much, now you can edit terrain and the building are placed better with their own little "foundation" under them. These changes have made it easier to appeal to a broader audience because you can let the player build their own yards and have them better suited to themselves.

Are you a modder? If so do you make maps? I would love to see which maps you've made.

I don't see how adding a better placable system has restricted mappers in making maps.

The points you're making aren't quite adding up tbh, you mention animal pens in your first post, then say you don't know what its got to do with this. You talk about me sayign to remove the restrictions then say its a limit to the game, but there was a mod released for PC users that pretty much removes all the placable restrictions. You say that the game engine couldn't handle GE in the game, but I never talked about GE in my first post. You then go on to talk about how I may not be a modder, that should be pretty obvious by my user signature, but if you still want me to "see it from your POV" feel free to ship me a pc and I'll start modding so I can see it from your POV.

[muzickmage]

I really have no idea where exactly you are getting some of these opinions of your's. I can only say that I most definately disagree.

For starters..... the new placeable system + terrain tools is the reason why I don't play FS17 anymore. I just finished building a sheep farm, a chicken farm, and a horse ranch... exactly the way I want them. I didn't have to rely on Giants, or map modders to have those farms looking as they do.......

..... These features have encouraged me to play modded maps that I wouldn't even consider before. I'd look at some maps for FS17 and immediately see some of the very reasons why I ignore some maps. But for FS19, I can review maps differently. What can I add/change? I can make the farm yards bigger now, or smaller. I can raise/lower/flatten land. I can move the animials, and some of the buildings. I can change the size of the fields even if the land around it is mountainess by simply flattening out the mountain..... and... I can place my own buildings/decor. All on a modded map that without these features I wouldn't even consider.

Where you still see limits, I see FS19 as being a major step forward to giving the players a blank slate to build what we want, rather than be thankful for what we're given.

If modders are having a difficult time, I would say maybe tail back on the unneccessary clutter they put on maps. Especially when the clutter can't be deleted by the player without using GE. The house on the modded map i'm using came with a bunch of clutter around the perimeter of the house as well as a few things distributed around it's yard. So when I decided to sell the house and place my own, I had a difficult time placing my house amongst the remaining clutter that really didn't need to be there. (hoses, barrels, washtubs, etc).

The fences around the fields are another example of how modders are working against the new features. How are we going to expand the fields if the fences can't be removed. I cut down the trees, level the land, and ..... well.... what am I supposed to do with those fences?

Being that these things all have to be added to the script as ... placeables... and you're suggesting that modders are not happy about this... then.... maybe they should stop using placeable ideas that work against the features themselves. Stop putting fences around the fields. Stop placing buildings that can't be removed. Stop placing junk cars, and junk piles. If it's that much of a bother for them... stop doing it. I'd be happy if they did stop. If I wanted that clutter around my map... I would simply use the FS19 features and place it myself.

The mistake, on the part of Giants, was giving us a placeable system without placeables. Because of the Giants setup I can only place 1 house on my map at any given time (without mods). Giants decided to give us only 2 houses, and assign both of them to the sleep script. So that means I can't build a sheep farm with house and farmyard, AND a cow farm with house and farmyard, AND a pig farm with house and farmyard, etc. What's the good of that? No decent sheds, barns, fences, trees, and well.... houses.

Then..... they give us terrain tools but no way to add water. Again, we need to depend on mods and download the water mod. Why didn't Giants just give us the water mod themselves?

If you were making an argument about the features being greatly lacking. I would have to fairly agree. But to label these features as a "mistake" ... I must disagree.

[Tylercheesey1986]

I really have no idea where exactly you are getting some of these opinions of your's. I can only say that I most definately disagree.

For starters..... the new placeable system + terrain tools is the reason why I don't play FS17 anymore. I just finished building a sheep farm, a chicken farm, and a horse ranch... exactly the way I want them. I didn't have to rely on Giants, or map modders to have those farms looking as they do.......

..... These features have encouraged me to play modded maps that I wouldn't even consider before. I'd look at some maps for FS17 and immediately see some of the very reasons why I ignore some maps. But for FS19, I can review maps differently. What can I add/change? I can make the farm yards bigger now, or smaller. I can raise/lower/flatten land. I can move the animials, and some of the buildings. I can change the size of the fields even if the land around it is mountainess by simply flattening out the mountain..... and... I can place my own buildings/decor. All on a modded map that without these features I wouldn't even consider.

Where you still see limits, I see FS19 as being a major step forward to giving the players a blank slate to build what we want, rather than be thankful for what we're given.

If modders are having a difficult time, I would say maybe tail back on the unneccessary clutter they put on maps. Especially when the clutter can't be deleted by the player without using GE. The house on the modded map i'm using came with a bunch of clutter around the perimeter of the house as well as a few things distributed around it's yard. So when I decided to sell the house and place my own, I had a difficult time placing my house amongst the remaining clutter that really didn't need to be there. (hoses, barrels, washtubs, etc).

The fences around the fields are another example of how modders are working against the new features. How are we going to expand the fields if the fences can't be removed. I cut down the trees, level the land, and ..... well.... what am I supposed to do with those fences?

Being that these things all have to be added to the script as ... placeables... and you're suggesting that modders are not happy about this... then.... maybe they should stop using placeable ideas that work against the features themselves. Stop putting fences around the fields. Stop placing buildings that can't be removed. Stop placing junk cars, and junk piles. If it's that much of a bother for them... stop doing it. I'd be happy if they did stop. If I wanted that clutter around my map... I would simply use the FS19 features and place it myself.

The mistake, on the part of Giants, was giving us a placeable system without placeables. Because of the Giants setup I can only place 1 house on my map at any given time (without mods). Giants decided to give us only 2 houses, and assign both of them to the sleep script. So that means I can't build a sheep farm with house and farmyard, AND a cow farm with house and farmyard, AND a pig farm with house and farmyard, etc. What's the good of that? No decent sheds, barns, fences, trees, and well.... houses.

Then..... they give us terrain tools but no way to add water. Again, we need to depend on mods and download the water mod. Why didn't Giants just give us the water mod themselves?

If you were making an argument about the features being greatly lacking. I would have to fairly agree. But to label these features as a "mistake" ... I must disagree.

I love fs and eberything 19 gives us and all the new aspects, however, I hate the fences and buried trees that prevent expansion. Why can't all fences and hedges be like AlienJims mercury farms. The ability to cut down fences on all maps would open up maps for custom farms
My biggest issue is those damn buried trees that mappers use to make solid hedges, most can't be cut and if they can they get stuck in ground and cause lots of issues. #banburiedtrees, placeable water in terrain painting would be awesome too, I'm sick of making river and channel systems and needing to use placeable ponds to get water in them

[chedly_farms]

I like Lars and Chris and company so I hope my post doesn't come across that I think everyone there at Giants is *insert negative adjective*.

I still think the placeable system is a fantastic idea. But I feel not every map needs to include it. I like realistic maps from Oxy and co. And I like Giants base maps and some other maps for placeables like Mill Landscape Midland. The flaws in the placeables are as follows:

1. You couldn't make roads or change terrain. YES it was fixed. But I'm including this because this wasn't in the release.

2. There are hardly any placeables! This is a big one. Giants gave us a few vanilla basics and that was it. Now we have to hope modders fill in the blanks. No trees, fences, bushes... They could have created a lot of cool placeables but they didn't. I feel like they really need to give modders more appreciation than they seemingly do. Modders have saved this game for them.

[BrandonD01]

Myself, I enjoy the placeable aspect of the game. Also the new terra-forming tool, but yes I believe there is some room for improvement. And with new updates and newer versions and different input from players and modders alike I believe Giants will try and implement these where possible. As someone said earlier, being able to place objects closer together and on any surface would be a great improvement, also being able to terra-form the landscape to my liking would help. As is right now if you place an object and the ground is raised or lowered nearby you can't always smooth out the ground or flatten it back to the original state around said object.

[cwattyeso]

I'm not going to complain about the Placeable System or the "Build Your Own Farm" intention Giants had for FS19. It as many have said if a welcome feature and really additional features that can expand a game's life span and give players more hours of play makes the game better value for money, however the new feature in this game does seem slightly poorly implemented and executed, but then these forums are filled with tons of threads about elements of this game that seem half finished. Maybe as others have stated Giants insistence on sticking to this "We must get a game out every two years to the day" cycle does more to negatively effect the quality of the product ultimately we're all paying for.

Sure the system has meant additional work load for the modders, but I don't agree with some of the things raised by Billy

Most mappers I know or have spoken to have little interest in placeables as they would rather build the farmyard they want in GE. But with Fs19 this isn't a choice anymore. Mappers HAVE to include it in there maps whether they want to or not.
For starters all the animal husbandries HAVE to be added as placeables into the map. All the animated things like gates, and lights etc have to be added to the map as placeables. Then there is the extra coding needed to assign all the various parts of the farmyard to which of the 3 game modes it will appear in or not. All this is extra coding which you HAVE to do, regardless if you as the mapper want to ever use a single placeable or not.

This also brings us onto the next flaw with GIANTS new focus.

The game modes. It is impossible for a mapper do cater for everyones preference.

If I want to allow players to play on the hardest game mode but keep the existing farmyard I can set it as such, but then I am stopping the players who want to play on the hardest setting with no farmyard on the map. The same principle is true of all the game modes. With each one you are restricting a different player type. So it is impossible for the mapper to win.

Firstly nowhere is a mapper forced to add Animal Husbandries into a map. The map must on a base level support players buying Animal Pens and stuff in the stuff and being able to place them, but there is nothing written anywhere in Giants Modding Guidelines and stuff that state maps must have Husbandries built into the map. For many players they would rather modders didn't pre-place stuff like that so they can put them and organise them where they want them. Some players like to have the choices to place all their husbandries together, some like to spread them out around the map. The good thing is the game gives the players choice. I'm actually more annoyed by map authors who add stuff like this to their maps, so when you first load them up there is stuff placed all over the map, and when I go into the garage can't sell and remove them. That's more of an issue for me as a player, the number of maps that come out where we can't sell off all the buildings, decorations and stuff we don't want to use. Then subsequently when we go into the store after selling off some items, they don't appear as placeables that we can buy and put back into the maps where we want to have them. It seems more silly to me that map author will spend hours making and producing custom buildings, sheds, animal pens, silos etc etc and then forget to give player the option to buy them and place them themself from the store. That's why I like an author like Alien Jim for example who makes his map buildings no only available in the store to buy on whatever mode you start the game on, but also releases them as a Placeable Mod map to take and use on other maps.

As for the game modes again it's very easy for players who want to keep the existing farmyard but play on the hardest difficulty to start a game in 'New Farmer' mode and then go into the options and set the Economic Difficulty to Hard. That was one of the first things Giants patched into the game the ability to pick and choose start mode and economic difficulty separately after listening to the complaints of players who felt restricted by the New Farmer = Easy Mode, Farm Manager = Medium Difficulty and Start from Scratch = Brutal Hard Mode. So players could choose to start from scratch and remove all the buildings and placeables and equipment the modder put on the map, but then set the difficulty to easy.

I do think with the updates the game has got, and what Giants have changed and added (The terrain levelling/painting system) that I'm still a little surprised they haven't made functions of the Place Anywhere part of the default game. This would go a long way to helping a lot of players with the frustrations of the placeable system, especially those on the consoles. I know some map authors have built the basic functionality of Place Anywhere into their maps so players don't need the Place Anywhere mod, however I'm not sure if these maps are Console Eligible or whether they get rejected for have the maps base code altered. If Giants actually patched the Place Anywhere coding into the game, and had it then available to all players on whatever map, it'd make life a lot easier for people.

[billy_roberts_81]

I can see I'm talking to the wrong crowd here.

I'll leave you guys to your Farmville....

[redglasses]

So once people start debating against you, which you clearly wanted by the way you wrote the title, you resort to insults. Nice, we don’t need people like you in this community.

[Husqvarna TS 352]

It kind of depends what map your playing on and what your placing. Estancia I can place anything pretty much anywhere but I just tried to on the old farm countryside and nothing would go anywhere, not even a flat field

[The.EuroFarmer]

OK guys,

I will tell you my opinion and of course I never claim I am correct.

In previous FS versions, a good map was essential, mandatory. In FS19 with the placeable system, it doesn't matter in which map you playing; what you need are placeables.
From the moment Giants decided to change the concept and give us placeables and landscaping tools, they forgot to do two things:

1. Give us many placeables. Placeables of everything.
2. Bulldozers and excavators.

Yes, in FS19 we can play with the way we want and convert the map with the way we want, but it would be good if we had a bulldozer to remove a useless building, it would be good if we had a bulldozer to remove that rock from the middle of the field, it would be good if we use a digger and remove a hill in order to make a flat area, etc.

Placeables and ability to demolish with bulldozers, is what the game needs in order to be 100% complete. Yes, we PC users can use GE and remove that building and that rock, but how about those console users?

Personally I find FS19 to be the best game ever, even better than FS17, but the lack of many placeables and the lack of bulldozer is not giving the player the 100% freedom to be creative.

Happy Farming.

[muzickmage]

Giants takes the time to create a bunch of miscellanious toys they like to polute the map with (hoses, washtubs, buckets, rakes, bikes, etc) but don't bother offering us placeable ideas to complement one of their main features. I don't know what Giants expected us to do with a placeable system with no placeables.

And if that lack of logic doesn't confuse you try Giants other main feature.... the terrain tool. Giants boasts that we can build a farm the way we want, but yet, they clutter the farmyard with junk that we can't delete, add a bunch of those miscellanious toys all over the place which also can't be removed, completely deny us the ability to create water areas, and apparently don't see the need for us to have an "undo" option.

Add to that the map modders who know very well that we can't remove these things, but still they clutter their maps with them anyway. They put fences around fields, rocks and towers in the middle of a field, and clutter the farmyard with toys... making it frustrating for those of us who like to make the best of the new features. If the modders would take these unneccessary things out of their maps their maps would be that much more cleaner and will load quicker. Plus it will save them the time of placing them all on the map.

And OMG... another modded house tied to the sleep script? Really? Try creating houses that aren't somewhat useless because we can only place 1 on the entire map.

Personally, I think modders for FS19 (to some degree) are creating their own problems by adopting the same level of logic as commonly expressed by Giants.

The bigger problem is .... I don't see either side assuming steps to resolve some of the issues. Giants hasn't updated us with an undo button for the terrain tools, or given us the water tool. Giants hasn't offered us a placeable pack to compensate for their "lack of". And as for the modded maps, they are still full of unneccessary clutter and restrictions the modder knows very well we can't fix, or remove during gameplay.

The "mistake" isn't the gameplay features themselves. The "mistake" is in how the features were offered by Giants, and how they are being managed by modders. If Giants would have given us a more thought out system (add logic) and if modders would acknowledge the limitations of these features when creating maps, I trust we'd be all having a completely different conversation. Or at least one with different complaints.

But unfortunately, it is what it is.

[Corstaad]

They didn't bother with the economics behind the additional cost of placeables. Any map without the animal placeables buildings is adding easily half million in debt. Farming without a grain bin *censored*. Add more money to debt. They can hire people to assist them on the side of the game but they don't. The excuse of a small company is funny.

[billy_roberts_81]

Maybe the issue is you players who want something that is not possible. GIANTS hyped up the placeable system so much you actually thought you could do whatever you wanted. The reality is the placeable system will never do want you want.

To make every object on a map placeable is not feasible.

For starters it means you would have a mod map that would be too large for consoles to handle as the MB is restricted on size for maps on console. Every placeable increases the MB size.

As in all aspects of gaming you have to compromise on what is a priority and what isn't.

Second not every object can work as placeable, this varies on the type of object, what type of terrain it needs, and how its orientation is setup, etc.

If I hear one more stupid comment complaing about mappers putting fences and hedges around fields I'm gonna flip.
Welcome to the real world, you don't just get to knock down fences and hedges wherever you like.
Here in the UK it is actually illegal to remove a field hedge unless you have permission to from the local government. This is to do with environmental issues. Unless you have a very good reason (improving safety of a field entrance) then it is always a "No".

Next up if you want to have realistic fencing and hedges, those just don't work as placeables. The orientation and terrain differences just makes it look awful. I don't want fencing and hedges that are indentical all the time, it kills the immersion of a map and makes it look pathetic. The only way is to place those in GE where you can vary the placement with none of the restrictions of the placeable system.

If your that against a map that is made in a realistic way why don't you just play on a flat blank map. It seems most of you would be far happier with that solution.

I also notice not one of you has ever made a map, until you do how can you possibly hope to understand it from a mod mappers POV. Although judging by some comments your not even interested in that, but are quite happy to complain and moan, which makes me laugh that you accuse me of being insulting, yet you are insulting most mappers out there for the way they make there maps.

The placeable system was only ever meant to augment a map, not radically change it.

There is no way the game engine could handle a fully deformable terrain, and high tech placeable system that would work fully in a 3D environment.

I do blame GIANTS for this as they hyped up this feature so much and in reality it was never going to live up to your expectations. GIANTS never had any intention of releasing tons of placeables for it. They are relying on the modders to do it for them.

For console players though having more and more placeables just removes more slots for them to buy equipment ingame.

Lastly you keep forgetting one important factor. Map makers are making maps they want to play not what you, me, or joe bloggs down the road wants. Why should they make what we want over what they want?

[Derplodactyl]

My only real gripe is the collision zones when the game is in its vanilla state, the fact you must have a certain amount of space between placeables which, although I understand why, means you can't have things the way you want it exactly. The place anywhere mod for PC is a God send, and I am truly grateful to the author for bringing it out