Must-Have Features for the Next Farming Simulator After FS25

I first got into the Farming Simulator series with the 2009 game. I’ve played Farming Simulator 2009 and everything that came after it (except the mobile titles). Sure, there have been plenty of improvements, new equipment, detailed maps that look great, and a lot of new gameplay. FS25 is still getting stronger through DLC packs.

But what about the features that should be in Farming Simulator and somehow never quite make it in at the level they should?

Irrigation System

Irrigation is basically a must in farming games, and it’s still not in the game. I don’t know how much irrigation is used in European agriculture, but in a lot of countries around the world crops don’t grow on rainwater alone. Especially with water-hungry crops like corn and potatoes, growers irrigate three to five times. They use advanced methods like drip and sprinkler irrigation. Center pivots, automated systems, drip irrigation, and sprinklers could all be added.

Missing Vehicle Damage and Breakdowns

You still don’t see tractors that break down after a crash, get stuck in mud, or blow a tire. No cultivators with a snapped arm from forcing them, no fertilizer spreader that fails. Smash a tractor or car into a wall and nothing happens. In a series this popular, I’ve been wondering for years why such a simple mechanic isn’t there.

Dynamic Helper System

When there’s a job you don’t want to do yourself and you can assign an AI helper to it, then you speed time up and jump to the next month, that job should be finished. In Farming Simulator, that doesn’t happen. The helper keeps going from wherever they were even if you skip time. That’s pretty ridiculous.

Dynamic Soil

Another feature that shouldn’t be this hard to add is proper dynamic soil. Even games like Cattle and Crops and Professional Farmer have it, and Farming Simulator 25 still doesn’t really. When you work the land, the field color changes based on what you’ve done. But if you run a heavy tractor over a spot, the ground doesn’t compact. Well, it does, but when you quit and reload, it’s back to normal.

And shaping terrain in a sim shouldn’t be painting. We’ve got all this equipment and we can’t use it to shape the land. We do it from the build menu by painting.

Buildings That Don’t Finish Instantly

The system they’ve only just started adding needs to apply to every building. Place a blueprint, haul the materials, and build it yourself. Or buy the materials and hire workers to put it up. Dropping a finished building on owned land from the build menu doesn’t really fit a simulation.

Painting Buildings for a Personalized Farm

I think this would boost replayability in a lot of sims. Fine, production buildings already let you pick colors, but what if you grabbed a roller and painted the place yourself? That would be a much better system.

Winter That Feels Empty

I wrote about winter in FS25 recently. Even there, what you can actually do is limited. In real life, once fall farm work is done, farmers handle equipment maintenance, take care of farm needs, and prep for the next year. If fences broke, roofs wore out, and we had to repair them, that alone would add a solid gameplay loop.

Real Livestock

The current animal system just doesn’t fit Farming Simulator anymore. The series needs much deeper livestock gameplay. Births, tracking individual animals, a health system, a max lifespan, animals dying after going hungry long enough (that would push realism). Free-ranging animals on open pastures, a real ranch system, would be perfect. They could sell millions of copies on that alone.

Walking into the chicken coop and collecting eggs one by one. Even imagining it sounds good.

Neighbor Farms

Not just static NPC farmers, someone who finishes breakfast, hops on their tractor, and goes out to plow. Borrowing equipment when you need it, or helping when they’ve got a problem. A neighbor friendship system and mechanics like that should be in the game.

Better Greenhouses

Greenhouse work is hand-tool work. You don’t drive a tractor in there and spread fertilizer. Right now we basically just fill water and make money from greenhouses. Imagine hoeing the beds by hand, sowing seed by seed, fertilizing by hand. At harvest, picking crops one by one, palletizing them, and selling them.

Variables That Affect Yield

We can hit max yield by doing certain tasks. What if things outside our control affected yield too? Hail cutting yield, or a wet spring boosting it. Tornadoes, fires, other natural disasters. Locust swarms. Wouldn’t that feel more real?

Got features you think should be in the game? Drop them in the comments.