Farm Hand quantity and payment

[john.h.cox]

Personally I really enjoy the help that farm hands give you but as your farm grows, like mine has I feel that I could do with a few more. Looking at the maths a total of 15 farm hands will cover a maximum of 2,520 squares of land (15 x 168) whereas the overall size of the complete map when opened equals 20,000 squares (25 x 20 x 40). Therefore the farm hands look after approximately 12.5% of your farm leaving 87.5% for you to cover. If at a farm level of say 100 you were permitted maybe an additional 5 helpers that would be more acceptable. The other thing that I somewhat dislike about farm hands is the chore of having to pay each one individually every four hours. Would it please be possible to have a direct debit system payable at the pawn shop (rename it bank?) where you could pay all your workers by the hour for as long as you want, that's assuming you have the number of tickets available to do so. If you don't have enough tickets to pay the entire workforce then the current system could still apply where you just visit and pay the ones that you want to.
If anyone has any other ideas or a better suggestion please add a comment and if you do read this Mr WaaghMan please can you tell us that something like this might be a possibility or is it just wishful thinking on my part. By the way this is not in anyway a complaint as this game is outstanding, just a small improvement if possible.Thank you

[Midnight Blue 01]

I just want to add here John that I somewhat agree with you but I think its unfair that we have to pay them with tickets but have to spend so much to buy them in the first place.....

[john.h.cox]

Thank you @chubshaz but I think that you'll find once you get well into the game the tickets won't become too much of a problem and you'll have plenty to spare.
I was hoping for a response from the developers to this suggestion but as yet no joy, hopefully they read these discussion threads?

[lotw_1]

I think the farmhands and the auto feeders are way out of balance. I would rather just leave the PC on and hope that someone comes in and does the chores for me, since the farmhands are a little expensive and feeders are a joke..

[john.h.cox]

It was not really the cost of paying farm hands that concerned me, more the fact that you have to go to each individual one of them (I have all 15) at least every four hours to pay them. I was hoping an easier alternative payment method might be considered and hopefully the dev's will be able to say if this could be possible in the future.

[Followlon]

The developers had already commented on this topic.

There will be no further farm helpers and there will be no extra payment system for the farm helpers.

[john.h.cox]

Sorry @Followton but I haven't seen any comment from them and to dismiss a reasonable suggestion without giving a reason doesn't look good. I love this game and think the dev's have done a fantastic job with it but they should be listening to their players concerns and not just dismissing things out of hand. Thank you

[Followlon]

Basically, every thread is read by the company Milkstone, but not every thread is commented by the developers.

The desire for more farm helpers is not new and the desire for a simplified payment system is not new either.

Farm Together has never felt the need to be a kind of business simulation or an incremental game. Therefore it is not possible to automate the farm. You also notice that with the farm helpers, because they are not able to plant crops. In this game, the focus is on the player. The player must be active to succeed with his farm. Therefore, there will be no further farm helpers because it does not match the philosophy of the game.

Farm helpers are nothing more than little helpers. Not more. Of course, distributing farm helpers throughout the farm can lead to long runs. I have visited other farms where the farm helpers are in the immediate vicinity and with a small tour all could be paid. So it's more a question of organization.

[john.h.cox]

Thank you "Followton" for your more detailed explanation of why my suggestions will not be implemented. I do however need to make these observations regarding what you have stated :-

1) I f the developers can find the time to read the threads why can't they comment on them all. OK some might be a bit outrageous or impractical but they are raised by people who have bought the game so they deserve a reply. I have numerous Early Access games where the dev's go out of there way to answer every question and I would like to think that could also be the case here as well.

2) If you can have 15 helpers why not more when your farm has grown to a higher/larger level. Your argument about it not fitting the philosophy of the game doesn't stack up, if that was the case you wouldn't be allowed any at all!

3) It is not practical to try and place all 15 farm hands in a small area if you want to fully utilise them unless you have decided to flatten all the land which I definitely would not wish to do. It is hard to find many areas on the map 13 x 13 squares that don't have hills, rocks or water present so you have to use the ones you do find sensibly, disregarding how far the farm hands are away from each other. There are already so many innovative aspects present in this game that I'm sure a simpler payment system would not beyond the dev's capability.

4) If you get the chance please look at my farm and tell me if you think I have placed my 15 farm hands stupidly and that you could have done better. My user name is "john.h.cox"

Finally as I have stated previously I really love this game and have spent many more hours on it than I have ever spent on any game before. The fact that my suggestions will not be implemented will definitely not stop me playing the game, the only thing that could possibly do that would be the attitude of the dev's.

Thank you again

[alicorn24real]

I put my farm hands near my Points of Interest... then it's easy to visit them all. You're allowed 15 of each, I think. (I don't have all 15 farm hands... I just move them around as needed).

So I guess it's actually more accurate to say that I space out my POIs so that it's never a very far run to any given point, including the nearest farm hand.

[john.h.cox]

I also Have POI's close to my 15 farm hands but it's still a chore going to them all every four hours when I'm sure a simpler method could be devised.

[Frieren]

I only have farm helpers to do my harvesting of my crops *shrugs* ... and if they don't have any to harvest then i move them to my flowers ... use of teleporters to get around a big farm ....

[WaaghMan]

Hello,

Farmhands have always been a bit of a problem in regards to the game's nature.

On one side, if they can take care of most of the farm by themselves, the game would become more of an idle game, or a poor business management game, and less of a casual farming simulator. On the other side, farms can get too big for one or two players to manage, which is partially the reason why they were added in the first place.

On this posture, for now we intend to go with the more interactive, less passive gameplay approach, so we don't plan on increasing the number of allowed farmhands per farm, or their work area.

On farmhand payment, maybe at some point we'll allow to use some kind of building to pay all farmhands at the same time, but it's not a priority right now.

On answering/reading all forum posts, we do our best to read them all on Twitter, Discord, Reddit, Steam, Facebook, the suggestion forum and the email inbox, but it strongly depends on the workload we're having at that specific time: If we're dealing with fixing an obscure crash or bug report, or preparing a big event/content update, we may skip some things.

As for answering: It takes more time that you would expect. I'm not sure a person dedicated full-time to the task (which we don't have) would be able to answer all social media discussions right now.

[john.h.cox]

Hi WaaghMan I really do appreciate you taking the time to answer this question for me and as I have said before it's not a game breaking demand just something that I would hope you might consider in the future. I do think that once you have opened all 25 plots of land more farm hands are required, but it's your game and your decision. Thanks again for you response.

[Soulnet]

I agree with John here. My farm is level 77 and personal on level 55. 124 hours spent in game. There is only so much you want to do and with a farm that is full (i've used the flat map so when I say it's full, it's full) it's hard to spend time decorating when you need to do everything else as well. It would be useful to at least have one farm hand per plot expansion (and in a way it's something you work up to so it's not changing the flow of the game).

In essence my end game was looking to find a way to automate the whole farm but I see it's not possible.

Now everything is built, everything is unlocked I can only look at efficiency and beauty. If I can't build more helpers then the pink ribbons have no more use to me either and quests also become meaningless.

I can understand you don't want to automate the farm when you are starting out but surely the end game player could use this as a last challenge!

[john.h.cox]

Thank you @Soulnet for your support and your thoughts. I'm at a slightly higher level than yourself at 125 farm and 88 personal and I haven't even bothered to open all my land (3 plots left) as I already find it hard to look after what I have already got. Hopefully in the future the dev's might reconsider and allow us just a few more helpers as not only would this assist in reducing the workload it would also as you say give us a target to aim for in the later stages of the game.