I think I know why FS22 disatisfies me.

[TheGazbeard]

Since FS22 launched I've never been entirely happy with it and always wondered why given the plethora of new gameplay it brought, that wasn't in FS19. After playing many maps (both vanilla and mod) I'm starting to understand why it's not sitting right with me.

Firstly, is the implementation of seasonal cycles - you cannot turn them completely and fully off. You always have some seasonal effects running in the landscape, or have to settle for being in a fixed date on the annual calendar. This is very different to how vanilla handled it in FS19 where time just ran and the weather didn't change much - a subtle difference, but one that changes the feel of the game quite substantially. It also doesn't help that seasonal cycles is not at all as immersive as the former Seasons mod was ... including the location and weather "geo" system that it had, which leads me to -

Secondly, both Giants and mod map makers appear (for the most part) to have abandoned the practice of setting their annual weather calendars to permit multiple cropping per field per year. Here in Northeast England (not the best overall annual weather on the planet) many farms do run two crops per year in their non-hillside fields, despite the wet winters and short summers. They use crop seeds adapted (bio-engineered) for the locale to ensure there's a spring harvest after a long slow grow from autumn to spring, and a short fast growth in spring to summer harvest. Some crops are spring-sown and summer harvested, followed by another crop that's summer-sown and winter harvested (frost requiring root and leaf crops, e.g. parsnips and Brussels sprouts, the frost triggers sugar build-up in the root or leaf). I've seen nothing on any map I've played in FS22 where the calendar allows for dual cropping per field.

Lastly, the feature creep on productions has been insidious and unstoppable. The game is now at the point where it feels impossible to just farm, and that productions (on-farm or in-town) of either a cottage-size or industrial-scale is compulsory to run your farm profitably. In a way this ties back to the lack of dual cropping and the inability to maintain profitability without using value-adding production chains and crop processing factories.

Please, Giants, for the next version of the game - ensure that all seasonal effects can be turned off but that time runs like it did in FS19, as well as include a configurable weather and cropping calendar for players to use without editing maps' .xml files so that dual cropping can be performed again (when seasons are used). Also, while the forthcoming addition of carrots, parsnips, and beetroot is fantastic news; please add in extra leaf crops for fields, not just for greenhouses.

These are just some of my thoughts and feelings on FS22 as I approach 2000 hours in the game, others' mileage may vary (and that's fine - play the game the way YOU enjoy, but don't dismiss additional options being suggested).

Thanks for reading.

[Ag Hauler]

I played with Seasons on the previous versions more for the visuals than anything else. The default crop calendar does seem to be just off enough to mess with how things look. I personally don't farm as much anymore since forestry was introduced as a mod in 2013 though so take that into account. I do love the improvements in the forestry aspects of the game. As far as productions go, I really like the added ability to make different things. There are a couple of mods that I really like with this. One is Upgradeable Factories. I use this a lot on Silverrun Forest as I over run the capacities pretty early on. I think overall that Giants has greatly improved the game since I first started playing in 2009. It is really the only game that has held my interest long term. In some ways it has became so well rounded that it's hard to please everyone anymore. When I play I almost always start out with a little farm and small older equipment. Along with this I have a small logging operation. I tend to build the logging operation up to include a sawmill. Now I'm building to include everything else down the line. I don't necessarily have to but that is my play style. Often the farm doesn't grow that much just because I enjoy the forestry aspect more. I tend to be hardcore at it also with just a chainsaw and a small log skidder, a truck and a skid steer to load with. Oddly enough in FS17 and FS22 both I tend to keep going back to the default maps.

[Massey44]

So far I've only put 30 hours into FS22 and while I am definitely enjoying it there are certainly a noticeable lack of maps that feature double cropping and also quite a few that don't have a region specific calendar. Hobo's Hollow 4X is one of the few I've found that has double cropping. Regarding OP's XML editing annoyances there is a Crop Calendar Manager on the ModHub which lets you switch to any maps crop calendar but I'm not sure if you could switch it whenever you wanted to suit your seeding since I believe it said you had to save after changing it.

Seasonal visual changes rather than seasonal gameplay mechanics is a shame but it is what it is and I'd rather have that than not at all. Generally there's enough mods to kind of satisfy the amount of realism I want. However I do think it's a mistake to not offer players more detail/depth of gameplay mechanics that can be switched on or off to suit them because the console owners out there are far more limited regarding script mods but if those features were in the base game it wouldn't be a problem.

I appreciate Giants have to balance things between the casual gamer and someone who is wanting an in-depth simulation and since I fall somewhat into the latter I suspect I'm already in a small niche group but since I've been playing since FS15 I think its about time we were offered more complex and optional mechanics. Stone picking, mulching and rolling doesn't really cut it for me, try crop moisture and having to pay for crop drying, floods, drought, crop disease etc. which are actual real issues farmers face and that would be a major step in the right direction. Of course it has to remain fun and not feel crippling, I mean imagine every time your John Deere equipment needs repairing in game you're not allowed to use a workshop and have to wait a month for a JD tech to turn up at your farm, it would be realistic but it wouldn't be enjoyable. Same goes for realistic interest bank loans that repossess when you can't pay the installments, its still a game not real life and nobody needs that stress unless its purely optional to create challenge.

Productions is a bit of weird one for me. My friend has FS22 on console and I played a lot when visiting before buying it last week on PC. Now it was his first farm sim game and he totally loved the production chains and when I said "So you're not really a farmer, just a wool merchant aspiring to be a clothing salesman", I got a dirty look but we did laugh about it. At first to me I thought he was playing 'Pallet Simulator' and not FS22. Since then my opinion has changed a lot, the production is purely optional but I do tend to prefer maps that aren't filled with them. Being positive it certainly does allow for other playstyles, industrial scale manufacturing, small garden centres and farm shops or even small cottage sustainable living. So it's fine really and while I prefer to focus on arable farming, I certainly can enjoy doing a little of it during downtime as my mood suits me. Also as Ag Hauler mentioned for maps like Silverrun it does enhance the forestry side of things with the sawmills, furniture shops and projects.

[Lawma]

I wish we could choose the seasonal weather like we could in 19. Biggest miss from 19 is crop rotation. Least missed aspect is bale rotting. Or at least bale rotting so fast. It was inevitable seasons from Giants would be criticized, especially since they didn't introduce the feature first

[blue_painted]

I was never a fan of bale rotting, since one of the reasons for baling is that it preserves the hay or straw. I do miss the windrow being taken away, the ability to have hedges and foliage change appeareance through the year and the seasonal changes to animals.

[Lawma]

I get it and think the bale rotting needed tweaked. Maybe after a year or each year they lose a percentage of their volume. But again, I don't see Giants taking seasonal aspects that far. But check me off as being all for the more realism with tabs to disable. It's nice putting the little humans I'm responsible for on and turning off crop destruction etc.

[GrimGandalf]

Op out of curiosity what are your settings for the game? As this game can be played on several different settings and I feel those settings can drastically change the way people play. Also do you set any personal rules for yourself? I'm just trying to understand where your coming from with your dislikes. Not that I agree or disagree with them.

[ReddogSoW]

I get it and think the bale rotting needed tweaked. Maybe after a year or each year they lose a percentage of their volume. But again, I don't see Giants taking seasonal aspects that far. But check me off as being all for the more realism with tabs to disable. It's nice putting the little humans I'm responsible for on and turning off crop destruction etc.

That's interesting as I've been playing around with a mod to reintroduce bale rotting and trying to find a realistic approach to the loss rather than just replicating the Seasons 19 way of doing things. I've now ended up in a very different place than I started.

[Lawma]

That's interesting as I've been playing around with a mod to reintroduce bale rotting and trying to find a realistic approach to the loss rather than just replicating the Seasons 19 way of doing things. I've now ended up in a very different place than I started.

Yea, I felt 19 was not realistic. Maybe it needed a fluctuation based on number of days in a season? Good luck finding the right balance

[IceUul]

FS22 is most realistic FS so far, with some additional mods like crop rotation, manual attach, maize plus, precision farming, courseplay with autodrive and many more.
But after i add all these well working realism mods, farming goes very slow compared to vanilla FS19 for example. One year will
pass in 20-30 hours in gameplay, so it is like 10 times more slower.
So everything looks realistic but this slow tempo getting running my farm too tiresome and tedious.
I prefer realism and challenge in game, so it is a real challenge to play this game now.

Also these new DLC-s what are coming this year, does not make game more fun. I like new machinery and crops, but they don't change anything and planting and harvesting these new vegetables with these 0,8 and 1,5m harvesters are tiresome action. I feel FS22 has come extremely slow paced and realistic farming experience, compared to older FS series. So i am not sure i want more realism anymore...

So how to make farming faster? More workers and more machinery working same time, courseplay and autodrive could do this, but sadly in FS22 this is so power consuming process that any PC could not run this. So what i am expecting... next FS should have better gameplay, more interesting game mechanics and better performance running multiple workers and processes automatically in your farm. Tired already about tedious and boring processes what needs to be done everyday in FS22, more automation would be great but it needs better process optimization. Let's be honest, only very small farms run on one farm worker (you!), in real life farms have way more workers to handle all farming works.

BTW I have around 350 hours in FS22 and 1000 in FS19!

[DocDesastro]

For me, it is the way productions work currently. I think they are boring and badly balanced. I liked the LS19 productions mod. In 22 I scratch my head looking at making chocolade, strawberry cakes, building rollercoasters and producing pianos. Yet, we cannot brew beer frombarley and hops nor make wine from grapes. I understand, that the game works with abstractions. Let's face it: farming is a full-time job. Yet gaming is something for 1-2 hours in which we want to achieve the same.2-row harvesters are the real deal but inthe end, yes, if they should work realistically, then tending a field could easily take 8 hrs of boring grind unless you do this for a living. The motivation of making cash is its reward. We do this as a means of recreation. Still, there is no reason to make the game shallow. I think there are some among us liking the planning but without the need of doing everything themselves. Also there are some that enjoy micromanaging a small farm or just driving around in ridiculouly expensive combines with 14ft headers. I think the A.I. might be a good point to start improving to assist the player running a farm - i mean, this is exactly why you hire farmhands:do a task and I trust you getting the job done without me checking every 5 min. Focussing on farming might be a good idea as well and give the players the immersive feeling of doing farming. My best example was the 19 productions mod and the way it treated the apiaries. I felt like producing honey. Today, I just place the apiaries, place a spawn trigger and then it is free money without the need of doing anything else but selling the stuff. I loved the Mengele forager mod from ls15. Why? Because it emulated the problems riding too fast over swathes of hay too big snd it even had blades to be temoved after some tine. I still thank Stefan Maurus for this great mod. Still it was not too complicated. I like the balers with yarn input. Manual attachment of stuff. This all helps to feel farming. I do not need realistic refilling times at gas stations. Wasted quality time. I think, we can live with time compression and some degree of simplification as far as we feel we do something immerdive or meaningful. And sadly, DLC offering just more equipment which even is partially not SP suitable or crops the A.I. does not even care to plant do not help making the game more fun.

[snekko]

Let's be honest, only very small farms run on one farm worker (you!), in real life farms have way more workers to handle all farming works.

You can use te Contractor mod, You wil have up to 8 personages to use. Combined with some courseplay and AutoDrive friendly maps, you can realy give them a thask to do, without looking after them.

https://www.farming-simulator.com/mod.p ... tle=fs2017

[IceUul]

Let's be honest, only very small farms run on one farm worker (you!), in real life farms have way more workers to handle all farming works.

You can use te Contractor mod, You wil have up to 8 personages to use. Combined with some courseplay and AutoDrive friendly maps, you can realy give them a thask to do, without looking after them.

https://www.farming-simulator.com/mod.p ... tle=fs2017

Problem is that i can't do this, problem is that this is not working. Most of the farm jobs can't be done by workers and courseplay can run only four workers same time, after that game starts to run very poorly. Game does not support many workers working same time and doing all the jobs.

[FarmLordXO]

I've wondered why in the game you can't choose the growing season according to latitude, then the player himself lives if you play the game according to the rhythm of your own growing season.

Of course, the new mod that enables the growth calendar to use other mod maps helps a little.

[snekko]

Problem is that i can't do this, problem is that this is not working. Most of the farm jobs can't be done by workers and courseplay can run only four workers same time, after that game starts to run very poorly. Game does not support many workers working same time and doing all the jobs.

I usaly play with four characters, (my family of 4) and 1 truckdriver from the shop. In this way I have max 4 charactors working with courseplay, and the truckdriver only used AutoDrive. It works witout any problems for me, and can do a lot of things on a gameday. (timescale 3x fixed. and usaly runs out of daylights.)

I've wondered why in the game you can't choose the growing season according to latitude, then the player himself lives if you play the game according to the rhythm of your own growing season.

I have learned to change the cropcalender to my needs, and if i dislike the one its with the map, i changed it for my own. This way I have double cropping, and winter harvesting. (challenging with maps with lot of snow and the new Rainpain mod.)