Of all the cheatier things to have, that would be high up there if I wanted to give potatoes a whirl again. That addresses part of it anyway. Wonder if they have a bigger capacity potato planter?
I rolled hard mode on a fairly generic player map: Eastern North Carolina. So far not too bad but I have to get through the burnout period of doing contracts to pay the initial loan down but still get some starter equipment. I won’t be making much from the ultra tiny plot I was able to buy initially.
So I’ve played plenty of Stardew Valley type games that abstract farming into videogame busywork, and I can appreciate those games for their laidback “gardening” vibe. I’m guessing this is something different? Can those of you playing it – seems like this is in regular rotation for @Ginger_Yellow, @Skipper, @mjgreeny75, and a few others here – explain briefly what you like about Farming Simulator and why you play it? In a nutshell, what’s the appeal of these games over more abstracted videogamey farming games?
Well, it’s definitely totally different from Stardew Valley type games. For one thing, you can’t harvest crops by swiping a finger over your screen. Instead, you need to get inside your harvester and actually drive it back and forth across the field until it is full. And it is the same with ploughing, seeding, liming, removing weeds, whatever: you have to manually do it yourself (or pay a worker to do it, of course).
That may sound like work instead of fun, and I wouldn’t blame you if that turns out to be your take on the gameplay, if you try it. But for me, it just kind of works. It’s extremely satisfying to mow a large field of grass, and then windrow the mowed grass in neat rows and pick them up with a trailer, all the while listening to a bit of music. It is slow, relaxing gameplay. I’m busy enough in real life, and most other games I play are a lot more frantic. This is my game to slow down a bit.
At the same time, it feels weirdly rewarding to be able to buy that new expensive tractor or harvester with money you earned yourself, by selling crops you have grown. Or completing a production line all the way from the chicken eggs to the cakes (haven’t done that yet, by the way).
All in all, I can’t really explain it very well. It just clicks with me, like that other slow game, Euro Truck Simulator, did a while back. You can even play Farming Simulator with a steering wheel, which is fun! It is by no means perfect. For example, the handling of vehicles on the roads is rubbish. But that isn’t a problem: most of the time you’ll be creating straight(ish), fresh lines on fields anyway, not on the road, and the driving works fine there.
I’d say: try it out. Perhaps even with an older (cheaper) version. The basic gameplay hasn’t changed much over the years, so if you hate FS 15 (the one I started with), you’ll hate FS 22 just as much. If you like 15 however, you’ll love 22!
Yeah, for me it scratches that same zen, podcast-friendly itch that ETS/ATS does, while also having a more meaningful economy/management layer and a stronger sense of progression as you work up through larger and better equipment and develop production chains. Also it has a very rich modding scene.
I wondered the same, I’d never played the series until this iteration of the game in 2022. Like @mjgreeny75 said, for some reason it hit and filled a zen gaming moment with me as well. The Euro Truck Simulator reference is apt. Do any of us really want to drive a truck around Europe? Not likely. But with this game, seeing the sights, hearing the sounds, and enjoying it in a game, surrounded with some very basic gameplay looping around making money, getting better, getting bigger and better gear and expanding … it’s comforting in a way I’ve not played in a game.
I realized I basically reiterated what MJ was saying. @mjgreeny75 since you’re the latest to join in, what did you love from it as a new experience?
I guess it would be the production chains: that gives me a purpose, a goal to work towards. Other than that, seasons are nice, as they complicate matters a bit and make it more realistic. But overall, the charm of the game has stayed the same throughout the series: leisurely working with heavy machinery on a farm.
Thanks for the input, guys. That’s kind of what I was thinking. I’ve got a couple of things on my plate now, but you’ve piqued my interest for down the road!
I think I’m pretty much done with FS22 for the forseeable future, but this is very cool for silage work:
Some very cool mods covered in this video. A 500 cow autofeeding barn, a roller that does grass, fields and mulching, and a mowing pack with all sorts of options for single-pass work.
I see FS22 is on sale at Humble for their Super Simulator Sale. Is there much benefit to getting the Year 1 Season Pass bundle, or should I just stick to the Platinum Edition or the base game? Content in the season pass seems lights for the cost, but I don’t actually know how much it changes the game.
In my opinion after having bought season pass 1 I was a bit underwhelmed with the additions right up until the platinum expansion, which was decent. And that’s included in season pass one. But if you can just get the platinum for a much better price, go that route instead:
I show the platinum expansion at $20 and the full season 1 at $30. So that’s really your call. The platinum expansion adds a new base map, lots of new vehicles, and quite a bit of gameplay features, especially around logging and processing of lumber.
Those all comprise, “season 1,” So if you don’t really care about those vehicles, not a big deal. And here is why you really shouldn’t, straight into the game you can go to the, Downloadable Content, selection and get user created mods from the modhub directly, to your heart’s content. There are -thousands- of them, including -hundreds- of vehicles, some are absolutely amazing. For what it’s worth, there are hundreds of player made maps as well.
If you’re easing into Farming Simulator for the first time, just start with the base game and enjoy it and subsequent free mods from the modhub until which time you think, “I really really want that thing in the expansion,” and go from there. If you’ve played before and already know you’ll be addicted to it, at least get the platinum expansion.
Sine we’re asking questions and I picked up the base game for cheap a little while back - any of the year 1 DLC that wasn’t included in the season pass (also, wtf?!) worthwhile?
I have them and can’t remember a time when I might have used any of them beyond a Kubota tractor. I tend to like to play as something akin to a poor farmer, so my typical map progression is buying things that show up as the daily deep discount products, when I have the cash to do so. Then by mid-game I’m buying tractors I want, which usually don’t include those DLC items, above. To explain why, understand the Antonio Carraro pack is geared toward grape growing/harvesting. The Vermeer pack is somewhat of a specialty collection of gear around a specialized vehicle with specialized attachments for things like baling, mowing, etc. So the Kubota pack is really the only general use vehicle DLC in the Season One Pass.
But wait, it gets more confusing! There are other DLC’s that came out over the year that were NOT part of the Season One Pass, which was a gripe among many players. Some were free, like the excellent Precision Farming DLC, and many were paid but cheap, like some of the classic vehicle packs, the Pumps and Hoses pack, etc. Your mileage may vary. Again, my suggestion is try free downloaded content from the built-in modhub FIRST, then go after a season pass or individual DLC only if you’re chasing something that particular thing offers. The Platinum Expansion is an outlier here since if you really want to get into the logging in-game, it offers so much more gameplay around that within game that you should pick it up early on, again, if you want the challenge of that.
If I can pimp this game a bit, it was and still is something of my COVID escape. There is so much zen in the game I just found it completely pleasing to not be shooting at something or being hunted by something or worrying about enemies or competitors, etc. There’s also a lot of zen around working a field one step at a time, chasing the highest efficiency on a field, bringing things all the way to harvest, combining different crops or items into final products through factories and processing, animal husbandry and all the products associated with that, driving cool machines that have lots of buttons, knobs and powerful hydraulics to gander at, etc. I have spent HUNDREDS of hours (1300+) in this game doing the most mundane sounding descriptions: mowing a field, putting the grass into bales, taking the bales to sell, hoping for enough to get that new trailer, etc. It’s addictive even in it’s zen-like enjoyment. And you learn a lot about farming along the way.
Farm Sim season passes are basically never worth it for the reasons given above unless you’re a vehicle completist. Mods are just as good and you can buy the gameplay stuff separately cheaper.
Thanks for the great explanation!
Looks like the Platinum Edition is $6 more on Humble than the base game so I’ll probably get it. The season pass bundle is another $11.50, which doesn’t sound worth it.
Sounds like a steal! Hop in to the game and enjoy! And try that free modhub content in the game as well.
Think I might start an Upper Mississippi River Valley map soon.
I started a new game after the posts here and pulled up a new user map, Frakenmuth Farming. Supposedly a, “Michigan, USA style farming map,” it’s flipping huge. It’s also very Midwest-like in that all the map is laid out in cardinal directions with long, straight roadways and field edges. It also has some farms you can buy and either use or sell the buildings. The map is decieving in that there are 41 fields, but each is quite large with only scattered small fields for early game. There are some collectibles for reward and a few industry buildings available to buy as well.
It’s an easy map due to the straight layout. It’ll also be a great map for large farm gear when I get to that point. I’m playing in hard economy but I don’t think it will pose too much issue beyond extending the time to mid-game. My only issue with it is that it’s just a bit TOO flat and TOO wide-open. Some of the other games I still have going have more variance.
Let me know if Mississippi River Valley map is good.
Yeah, I get bored on flat maps. Griffin Indiana was well designed, but it didn’t hold my attention for long. La Coronella is more my kind of thing, loads of verticality. I’d just like that with really wide roads and the occasional large flat field for root crops.
UMRV seems like a good balance. Big fields and roads, but an interesting layout (and obviously a big water feature). Also some custom production, which is always nice. Not sure it’s actually out in 1.0 yet though.
Same here for both. I think that’s why I’m already asking about UMRV, lol!
La Coronella sounds good. I may have to check that out. And I completely agree on the wide roads for vehicles. I love the look of many of the Euro maps but man it’s a pain carting a harvester pulling an extremely long header around all those bends and road obstructions, then also dealing with hedgerows, etc.