Hyper-slow growth, 0 fun, dead game

[StoneTheCrows]

I don't know why other people pre-order games but in my case it really was because I thought it'd be as enjoyable as I found 19, I was just disappointed by it. I wanted to be able to use this one as a base on my YouTube channel to write stories about the games I play before YouTube became saturated by FS22 videos. It's the kind of thing that can kill a channel before it even starts if I release a video amidst a dozen other channels all of which are much bigger than mine because I disappear down a long list and no one can see my videos.

However, a game is boring if I'm working for an hour or two (in-game time) then going to sleep. Or skipping the entire winter because I have nothing at all to do.

I wanted to be among the first channels that showed the gameplay that didn't have early access. Now I have to either find a new base game for my platform or just abandon the idea. I don't like having games that I never play, though.

Thanks for taking the time to share this. I can see why you were disappointed.

I wonder whether the plans you had for FS22 have led you to judge it by your preconceptions, rather than assessing it as a game in it's own right.

I ask this because FS22 didn't meet my preconceptions either. On 19 I had a small dairy and arable farm on Attingham Park (with Seasons 19). I had expected to see a more detailed seasonal system. I had read about the production chains but I knew they weren't for me and I wouldn't use them. I wanted to run a Mediterranean vineyard and olive grove, and obtain a regular income from greenhouses.

Most of those expectations didn't work out. The centre of my farm is now a distribution hub, located under a huge open sided shed. I collect up pallets from various sources, load them in trailers and distribute them. I only afforded one vineyard, and I built a grape processing unit to make juice. I had to revert to arable to pay for the orchard investment, but now am planning an oil production unit to process canola. I always used to borrow and spend in FS19 and used contracts to stay afloat; in 22 I have invested carefully and saved with an eye to the future (the second vineyard and my olive groves). I haven't done a single contract.

The point I am making is that I have found FS22 to be an entirely different game to both FS19 and Seasons 19. It is a strategic building game (albeit with much farming-style micro management). Judged on that basis I have found it quite compelling and very playable.

In some ways I miss the quiet rural idyll that was Attingham Park. Perhaps in the future, with new mods, there may be more of that.

I think there is more role-playing story potential with 22 than with 19. But of course they are different sorts of stories. So perhaps there is still room for some alternative approaches to YouTube videos?

[Timothy1176]

Just my 2 cents here...the option should be added for fast growth. Reason being is that you do not have to turn it on if you want realism...if you want more arcade style turn it on by all means. Both sides of the fence have good points, however the inclusion of fast growth as an option does not take away from the realism people want because they do not have to enable the setting. THUS, those of you complaining about it killing the realism of the game to have this option are basically dictating your style of play onto others when you don't have to use the desired setting if you want the realism. Stop ragging on people who want to at least have the option and may not play the game as you do

[StoneTheCrows]

Just my 2 cents here...the option should be added for fast growth. Reason being is that you do not have to turn it on if you want realism...if you want more arcade style turn it on by all means. Both sides of the fence have good points, however the inclusion of fast growth as an option does not take away from the realism people want because they do not have to enable the setting. THUS, those of you complaining about it killing the realism of the game to have this option are basically dictating your style of play onto others when you don't have to use the desired setting if you want the realism. Stop ragging on people who want to at least have the option and may not play the game as you do

I think just about everyone who has contributed to this thread agrees it would have been useful to have a way of fast-forwarding through the calendar. That's an open door you are pushing at.

[mackintosh]

Yep. Big fan of choice here. I like the current implementation, and with the Better Time Scale mod I can race through time even quicker than with sleeping, but if people want time progression "like it used to be" - I'm all for it.

[gordon861]

Even just compressing the game months down to game hours would do it. So you would still have some crops taking different times to become harvestable, but it would be four game hours rather than the current four days/months.

[Iconia Star]

Thanks for taking the time to share this. I can see why you were disappointed.

I wonder whether the plans you had for FS22 have led you to judge it by your preconceptions, rather than assessing it as a game in it's own right.

I ask this because FS22 didn't meet my preconceptions either. On 19 I had a small dairy and arable farm on Attingham Park (with Seasons 19). I had expected to see a more detailed seasonal system. I had read about the production chains but I knew they weren't for me and I wouldn't use them. I wanted to run a Mediterranean vineyard and olive grove, and obtain a regular income from greenhouses...

...I think there is more role-playing story potential with 22 than with 19. But of course they are different sorts of stories. So perhaps there is still room for some alternative approaches to YouTube videos?

I don't know to be honest.

In 19, I started out writing little stories about my character (because I always do that when I create a character.) Then I wrote little backstories for the neighbour farmers of Ravenport. People who didn't like my character and people who did. Some believed that I was trying to run them out of town. The owner of field 8 (the biggest) had inherited her farm and wanted to move to France to get married but she had to wait till I got enough money to buy her out.

As I built up my funds I ended up buying every piece of land. Even ones that weren't fields. But I always had a reason to buy out a neighbour including framing one neighbour for vandalising that big cow statue in the centre of the map.

I created four farms. All of which had their own colour schemes, personalised license plates and function. They owned specific fields to help with that.

The main farm (blue and white) owned the most fields but also had the little shop for honey and fruit. She only had the bees and "traded" food for barrels. The second farm (black and red) was the animal husbandry, completely clearing out field ten for buildings and using the fields next to her for animal feed. She also had the fruit trees which she would sell to the main farm shop. Next was the small farm (red and gold) in the north west corner combining fields 1 and 2 for potatoes and planted sugar beet in field 3. Most of her crops went to the animal farm but excess was sold. Finally the little field (yellow and black) had the sawmill and carpentry and owned field 6 which had about 1700 trees on it (the AI I sent to plant it glitched out and double planted the trees.) All the characters that I created traded with each other, were friends and had lives outside of their respective farms.

I never needed to borrow money from the bank... or use cheats to get what I wanted.

At one point early on, I downloaded seasons but I spent about four hours (real time) with doing two transport missions per game day while I waited for harvesting contracts which, when the fields were ready for harvest cleared out without ever giving me a contract and left me facing another four hour with nothing to do again. In short it didn't work out for me so I uninstalled seasons and put the slow growth (three days to grow crops) on so that I'd be able to work every field without having to rush things.

When it came to 22, I watched a couple of the videos. I knew about seasons but I deliberately didn't watch too many videos. I wanted to be somewhat surprised by what was planned. I had assumed that the seasons would give me something to do between growing cycle. Especially at the start when I couldn't afford anything. I was looking forward to it.

I'd hoped to be able to continue with my stories but with a twist. I wanted to be able to use FS22 as a background for my character and add other, non-simulation games to my story.

Now I have a little problem. I don't like the sound of my own voice (I sound like a guy when I'm recording and it bothers me) so it took half a dozen attempts just to say "hi, everyone..." So I started off in Haut-Beyleron (on the easy mode with economic difficulty on normal so that I wouldn't have to buy my first vehicles and I'd have SOME parts of a farm to begin with,) did my work and all I could do was go to sleep. Then... do a single contract to fertilize a neighbour's field and... go to sleep. Do a ploughing job and... go to sleep.

Would have been a rather boring video, right?

I had assumed that Giants were experienced enough to understand that everyone plays games in their own little ways. Some people role play and some people just get down to work. They apparently didn't understand that and forced everyone to play THEIR way. Completely ignoring the idea that there are going to be new players who have never played the previous versions. Players who will have no idea how to look after the animals, don't know how to use half the machinery and there's NO tutorial on how to make profit from production chains or grow grapes or olives.

If I have to wait a while for some random video creator to figure out how to do this lot and upload their video tutorials then there's something... broken... in the game. Because I'm not a farmer. I'm a gamer. I don't know the difference between a planter or a seeder. As far as I'm concerned they're the same thing but plant different crops using magic seeds that grow any crop that I tell them to. It's not as if we buy wheat seeds to plant wheat, barley seeds for barley etc. now is it? We can't even use the wheat that we harvest to get seed directly from that (though I believe we can harvest potatoes and use them as seed but I hate potatoes because they're a pain in the backside to harvest lol.)

I didn't even KNOW that there were silly little collectables in the maps until I randomly stumbled upon a video showing where they all were. One of which had gone into the game files to get the coordinates for each collectable. The game (and Giants) certainly weren't going to give me any hints.

I enjoyed FS19. It was a break from my usual games where I'm killing everything that moves, completing missions or escorting some doofus NPC from point A to point B. However, I came to the game late. YouTube was already saturated by huge channels so if I'd made a video on it I'd be lucky to end up on page 20 (My channel kind of died because I was forced to take two years off after my mother died and I had to completely rebuild my systems to make better content.)

FS22 was going to be my gateway back into content creation but I can't figure out how to make it interesting. I'm sleeping for four game months because I have nothing to do and the rest of the "year", I'm working for a couple of hours then going back to sleep. Even when I turn off all the regular seasons setting, making a month a single day, I'm still spending most of my time hitting that sleep button.

After four "years" had passed, I figured out that I'd slept for three of them.

I didn't want to spend another year re-learning how to play the game. I had enough trouble the first time when I accidentally built a cliff placing down a cow pasture and couldn't get my tractor up to feed them or getting headaches when I tried to manually harvest cotton (all those lines messed with my eyes.)

[blue_painted]

There's quite a bit of history involved.

Seasons was first introduced in FS17 and it revolutionised the game for those who wanted realism. We had variation from day to day, season to season and year to day. No more perpetual summer day! From a personal point of view, if it hadn't been for Seasons I would have stopped playing.

When FS19 was announced there was a lot of speculation: "Would Seasons be in the base game?" When it turned out that it wasn't there was the very predictable "GIANTS can't be bothered. Lazy developers. It's just an arcade game. Why do I pay AAA prices for a tractor driving game. etc etc."

Then when FS22 was announced, the same speculation. When it was announced that "Seasonal Cycles" was going to be in the base game the reception was ... patchy. "At last! Oh no, lazy/rubbish GIANTS will mess it up etc." and then, at FarmCon I think it was, they announced that it was going to be one day per month, so a year would pass in twelve days. Uproar! The first reply from GIANTS "We can add 0.5 time, so you can get it all done in one day!" Uproar. And then, I forget exactly when, "You can set a month to be from1 to 28 days long!" And now, when FS22 is released -- different uproar, from those who wanted to play "arcade" style.

There's no doubt that GIANTS have got the balance wrong with FS22, and I hope they can address it. I wonder how much of the underlying issue is the late change from 1 day months to up to 28 day months, and I guess it might not be as simple as just "put back the FS19 growth" because that code may have been replaced with FS22 season cycles code. Maybe Seasons should have stayed as a mod, maybe a GIANTS-own mod if Realismus didn't want to do it but, as I found out recently, consoles have limited mod-space so having seasons cycles in base-game saves space for other mods.

I hope the patch addresses this, and rebalances the fuel/maintenance and sorts out the console crashes ... and then we start getting mod maps so that I can start to play in earnest. One thing that is relevant: GIANTS are likely to put a lot of effort into the console market, various figures suggest its well over half of their sales, and by and large, I think there are more casual, arcade style players on console than on PC/Mac, so hopefully it will be high on their agenda.

[gordon861]

I think we should have known what was coming when they announced 'Seasonal Cycles' as opposed to 'Seasons' which we had in FS17/19.

I now feel that they have messed up by putting in seriously gutted Seasons into the game and then forced it on everyone. There is a very good reason that the original Seasons took a dedicated team to get out there and it was so complicated that it required a manual bigger than the one for the base game to instruct new players how to use it. But this Team worked there arses off to balance it and make it work as a simulation of real seasons that made sense. And then they added Geos that could be loaded and edited to suit the type of climate you wanted to play in.

I used to play Seasons sometimes, but others I just wanted to charge around doing the farm jobs, and over a couple of days I could do ploughing, spraying and harvesting, with a little animals thrown in for good measure. Giants took this option away for no obvious reason.

[Iconia Star]

I think it might have been different (slightly) if there had been seasonal jobs to do during the winter months instead of just spreading out the regular jobs over longer time. I saw ploughing contracts when I played during "December" but you don't plough frozen ground. You should be doing other things. You should be encouraged by the base game to stock up just for your animals who should technically be eating more when they can't be let out to graze. Yes, I know that they can't be let out to graze, but we can all pretend they do, can't we?

Now, I looked forward to seeing the snow in FS22. I WANTED to see the changes in the simulated environment. I wanted to go and get winter equipment and start clearing the snow away from my fields. But here's what actually happened...

I "woke up" one morning to see a blanket of snow across my entire farm. Started walking round to the back of the house where I'd parked my tractor. Before I got halfway around, the snow just vanished. A couple of days later I saw the snow appear... in sheets. Then a few seconds later, it vanished again. I've not seen it since.

I get it, of course. This is a new concept for the base game and it's going to take a bit of trial and error for Giants to get it right. But it SHOULD already be better than that. They should have gotten a group of people to actually play the game and see what worked and what didn't. It shouldn't be our jobs to find the bugs in THEIR game. Giants are not beyond reproach, though. When they mess something up, we should be allowed to call them out on it.

There are always going to be people who hate a game just for the sake of hating the game. Those who either don't bother trying the game or give it very little time to get used to the gameplay. There are also always going to be people who can't ever imagine that the company DOES make mistakes. Both types cause the company to stop engaging with the customers and that just leads to more problems down the line. Either they get sick of all the negative comments from the haters or they get so big-headed by all the positive comments.

When they bring out new stuff though, there should ALWAYS be some form of tutorial added for the new stuff. I imagine that the first Farming Simulator was basic farming (you can correct me if I'm wrong, I don't mind.) So the tutorial worked for that version... You know... the start where the game taught you how to cultivate a field, plant crops, harvest and sell the finished product. But when did they bring in the animals or the forestry?

Why don't we have a little tutorial on how to feed the pigs, the cows, the sheep and the chickens? The FS22 tutorial is exactly the same as the FS19 tutorial. Was it also the same as the one from FS17? have they just been adding new things to do and let the players just stumble around trying to figure out what to do with it?

So, new stuff in FS22... grapes and olives. Tells you what to do right in the orchard construction, right? Build the rows, mulch them, cultivate them, fertilize them, harvest them and prune the grapes. Is that a good enough explanation? Does it say anything about using a specific mulcher? Or a specific cultivator... or a specific fertilizer sprayer? So I read the description. I already had the tools I'd need to get the orchards growing.

I did NOT know that I had the wrong types of mulcher, cultivator and fertilizer sprayer. When I did go out and get the correct models, I admit to some flaw in my deductive skills, I couldn't figure out why I couldn't do anything with the rows. Turned out that I missed a crucial point in the work... let the rows grow for a month. Who taught me that? Certainly not the game or Giants. I had to wait a couple of weeks while someone with more experience figured it out and did a tutorial video.

Remember that there are new people coming into the game. A large number of whom are NOT going to bother looking up YouTube videos. Instead they're just going to see what little there is to do during the "months" decide that it's the most boring game they ever played and turn it off. Never to try it again.

Why isn't the game teaching me how to do the most basic tasks?

Is it because Giants are lazy and only bringing out the same old stuff that they've always done or because they just don't have any new ideas? Or is it because they've forgotten the newer players and are now only catering to the "elites". The players who blindly follow them and defend them from criticism when they can't be bothered to defend themselves?

They can't please everyone. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't try to. They've spent years building a game where every single player has learned to develop their own particular styles. What made them suddenly say "Sod the new players, let's just make a game for people who will say we never do anything wrong"? They should have already figured out that they needed to give the newbies something to do. Otherwise the seasoned players are eventually and inevitably going to move on while the newer players aren't going to stick around long enough to even see the next version.

If I can figure that out, why can't they?

**N.B. All questions are rhetorical.**

[Illinois Farmer]

Here is the new tutorial academy for fs22: https://www.farming-simulator.com/newsA ... ews_id=280

Unfortunately like a lot of things it isn't all the way developed yet. YouTube videos are good to teach others. That's why do many bigger youtubers are giant's ambassadors

[gordon861]

Here is the new tutorial academy for fs22: https://www.farming-simulator.com/newsA ... ews_id=280

Unfortunately like a lot of things it isn't all the way developed yet. YouTube videos are good to teach others. That's why do many bigger youtubers are giant's ambassadors

Yep, once again, Giants had the idea for a feature and it's been done in a half-arsed manner and not finished. What they've done looks OK but do you really expect them to ever finish it before the next FS? I mean even the bits they have done are not finished.

Also, YouTube Ambassador videos are not really an alternative for a manual or basic written info. For example, if I want to know what bit of kit I need to do a job I don't want to need to watch a 10 minute video or hope that I skip forward to the right part.

[Illinois Farmer]

They are better than nothing. I suggest picking videos that have what your looking for in the title. Mr sealyp, klutch, kederk, and farm sim guy, all do great tutorial videos.

[gordon861]

I totally agree, when I first started FS17 it was Arthur Chapmans tutorials that really opened the game for me from a standing start.

I'm pretty much holding off FS22 for now, waiting for a patch that will hopefully fix some of the balancing issues. To be honest I wish I hadn't bothered pre-ordering and instead held off until it had been patched and probably got it cheaper. But we'll see what the patch brings along and some of the MODs that come in the new year.

Until then currently messing with SCUM, which actually has DEVs that respond directly to their customers even on the Steam Forums. It's still early access but has lots of potential.

[mackintosh]

I'd prefer a manual. No offense, but I despise all youtubers with passion.

[Iconia Star]

That's exactly one of the points I've been trying to get across.

You can't say "Giants are not being lazy," then advising people to go to NON-Giants affiliated YouTubers for tutorials. That's an example of Giants being lazy. If I had to watch a tutorial video on how to play a Giants game, then it should be on a Giants owned YouTube channel.

The tutorials on how to play the game should be right there IN the game.

It's not a random YouTuber's job to teach people how to play Farming Simulator. It's Giants' job to make sure people understand how their mechanics work.