why did rune factory stop using 3 by 3 fields?

[VahidSlayerOfAll]

rune factory games moved from 3 by 3 to 2 by 2
each type of seed can be held in stacks of 9
in RF3 you could charge up and toss 9 at once
the best you can do in this is toss 4 at once to fill one plot this always leaves you with 1 seed. found just planting 1 at a time in a strait row well not looking and doing something else to be far better, looking at phone or watching tv show.
also when buying seeds its far easier to do the math and figure out how many you need to fill in all the empty fields

[HeraldOfOpera]

Because of the giant crops made out of 4 regular crops, probably.

[Algester]

its the move from RF4 well more like Oceans did away with the traditional field lots of 3x3 in favor of 2x2 when RF4 introduce the giant crop variant as well as to give the games their own identity as until RF3 it was still Harvest Moon with RPG elements

[Talithmara]

The groundwork for the changes to farming were actually established in RF3. 1 through Frontier were completely built around 3x3, while 3 started the move away from it.

Let me explain.

1, 2, and Frontier: One bag of seeds was a 3x3 square. Yes, one bag of seeds for 9 crops. The Seed Maker would turn one crop into one bag of seeds, allowing perpetual improvements of your crops by buying one greenifier, and turning that crop into your next batch. Quick, easy, intuitive, love to see it.

3, 4, and 5: One bag of seeds is one crop. The Seed Maker is no longer a thing, and now you need to scythe a fully grown, unharvested crop to get higher level seeds (this was RNG in 3, thankfully seems guaranteed to give seeds in 5, never bothered testing in 4 because of how wastefully horrible it was in 3.) You can then make the shop stock higher level seeds baseline, though I think the price of the seeds themselves also used to go up (mercifully, 5 doesn't charge you more for them.)

So yeah, 3 is the start of the current systems, and not just in farming. Take Rune Abilities for example: While RF2 was the one to add Rune Abilities, it was 3 that first went "okay but what if you could use a spear skill on a longsword?" 3 added dual blades and fists (indirectly; 4 added fists as a way of carrying a mechanic from 3 over) and really just is the start of a whole new era of Rune Factory,

So when in doubt, blame 3 if you don't like something and thank 3 if you do, haha! (And at least the games have built on and improved 3's changes so things are getting better. RF5 no longer makes me wish we still had RF1's farming as intensely as RF3 did, etc.)