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I'd be happy if they quit making expansion packs altogether IF...
Aflutter
Posts: 139 Member
to make up for it, they made more high quality game packs.
Let's use Get to Work as an example. There were three major aspects of Get to Work - the active careers, retail and aliens. Each aspect ended up being under-developed.
In the active careers, the detective career was the least interesting and the most repetitive, which was a huge shame. The patrols were particularly lacking since they came down to waiting to see which angry sims stomping around the neighborhood would get into a brawl first. The doctor career was probably the most buggy and the most frustrating b/c the lot was always understaffed and your doctor sims could get overwhelmed. The scientist career was the least buggy and had the most stuff to do, so it turned out to be the most interesting.
If the active careers had had their own game pack, they could have been more thoroughly developed, and I think would have turned out more satisfying. The doctor career could probably have been a game pack on its own, since it requires the accompanying sickness system. Perhaps our sick sims would have been able to visit a clinic when they get sick, instead of just ordering medicine online. And maybe when our detectives were on patrol, they could have ticketed kids who were playing hooky.
Aliens. Oh my god, how I hate aliens in TS4. I delete them whenever I see them. But you know what? I LOVE the vampires. And normally, I don't even like vampires. If the aliens had their own game pack and were thoroughly developed in the same way that the vampires were, maybe I wouldn't hate them so much. Maybe, I'd even like them.
Finally, the retail aspect, which, in my experience, ended up being so frustrating that I don't even use it anymore. I'd love to have my sims run shops, but the problems with customer and employee management were too difficult. Dine Out, in contrast, turned out very well, while using a similar-ish concept/system.
In the end, while I had been really excited for Get to Work to be released, it's turned out to be the expansion pack that I use the least. As TS4 has been developed, they have been better at focusing their expansion packs, so I wouldn't necessarily want Get Together or City Living to be separated into game packs. What do you guys think?
Let's use Get to Work as an example. There were three major aspects of Get to Work - the active careers, retail and aliens. Each aspect ended up being under-developed.
In the active careers, the detective career was the least interesting and the most repetitive, which was a huge shame. The patrols were particularly lacking since they came down to waiting to see which angry sims stomping around the neighborhood would get into a brawl first. The doctor career was probably the most buggy and the most frustrating b/c the lot was always understaffed and your doctor sims could get overwhelmed. The scientist career was the least buggy and had the most stuff to do, so it turned out to be the most interesting.
If the active careers had had their own game pack, they could have been more thoroughly developed, and I think would have turned out more satisfying. The doctor career could probably have been a game pack on its own, since it requires the accompanying sickness system. Perhaps our sick sims would have been able to visit a clinic when they get sick, instead of just ordering medicine online. And maybe when our detectives were on patrol, they could have ticketed kids who were playing hooky.
Aliens. Oh my god, how I hate aliens in TS4. I delete them whenever I see them. But you know what? I LOVE the vampires. And normally, I don't even like vampires. If the aliens had their own game pack and were thoroughly developed in the same way that the vampires were, maybe I wouldn't hate them so much. Maybe, I'd even like them.
Finally, the retail aspect, which, in my experience, ended up being so frustrating that I don't even use it anymore. I'd love to have my sims run shops, but the problems with customer and employee management were too difficult. Dine Out, in contrast, turned out very well, while using a similar-ish concept/system.
In the end, while I had been really excited for Get to Work to be released, it's turned out to be the expansion pack that I use the least. As TS4 has been developed, they have been better at focusing their expansion packs, so I wouldn't necessarily want Get Together or City Living to be separated into game packs. What do you guys think?
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It sounds glamorous, having ala cart options, but I am perfectly fine with $40 getting me a wide variety of content and features versus $20 for one focal point that does not bring all that much with it. Game Packs work for certain things, and for those things they work well. Not everything can be piecemealed into separate $20 packs and still be 'better' than one $40 expansion where each feature was designed to work together.
They could have possibly split the active careers/aliens from the retail, perhaps combining the latter with Dine Out since they operate on a similar system. That would have helped improve both, including the possibility of owning multiple stores without having to be present to open them every day which is what you can do with restaurants, and would have potentially allowed for more in-depth development of the active careers and the ability for Sims to visit the lots when not in the career (such as actually going to the hospital when sick and getting treatment).
Fun must be always -- Tomas Hertl (San Jose Sharks hockey player)
There is a budget in place that puts a limit on how much stuff can be in a particular pack. Dine Out + Retail would be exceeding that budget by a long shot, something would be cut in that scenario.
Active careers are similarly too big for a single game pack. I could see maybe a singular active career making the cut, but it would end up being 3 separate packs unless tremendous cuts are made. At the end of the day I doubt any option would improve the careers themselves, as their limitations stem from the way they chose to develop them not from them being developed in an EP.
I hate aliens. Most people hate aliens. Most of us would not want to spend money on an alien game pack. Including aliens in GTW means players that do like aliens still get to have some form of what they want rather than nothing at all. Vampires on the other hand, have always been very popular in the series- and therefore deserve, and get a game pack.
I also kind of think that, to say they would have made active careers better if they separated them out of GTW and gave them their own game pack, is assumptive. The active careers were already the main selling point of the expansion.
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- I've seen a lot of complaining by in fact people who don't like supernatural life states being in an EP because they feel forced to have them in their game while they don't want to.
- Where is the poll that confirms 'most' people hate aliens?
- Wouldn't you say toddlers prove that dissatisfaction with a certain feature rather lies in the way this feature has been handled in the past, than in the feature as such in general? And if the answer to that is yes (and it is
), wouldn't you say treating it as 'having some form of' would do both that feature and its fans wrong? Imagine they'd treated toddlers that way, giving the fans 'some form of a toddler', instead of the greates toddlers in the franchise.
This all apart from the fact it remains to be seen features are done better in GP's than they are in EP's. I know it's a popular assumption around here but I haven't seen any proof for it.There are also people complaining that there are vampires in the vampire game pack.... so you will see these kinds of complaints regardless of whether they put the occult stage in a game pack or an expansion.
I used aliens as an example of an unpopular feature. I assume aliens are unpopular because of opinions expressed about them in the past (and the lack of enthusiasm I see from anyone wanting them more developed), actually, I think I saw more people asking for developed plant sims than aliens.
In any case, even if my assumption is wrong, it was just an example.
Not particularly, no. This is because I don't consider toddlers to be a "niche" concept, the demand for them was massive and the response to the demand was appropriate. To spread this logic to something like aliens or GTW careers is stretching it a bit far. It would be a poor business decision to assume that your customers haven't responded too well to a certain feature in the past due to it being done poorly the first time around, and then invest resources in making it better next time around- when you could invest those resources into either making better the things that were well received, or trying new things altogether. They did it for toddlers because the uproar for them was massive- this means they aren't a niche feature, even though EA incorrectly interpreted them as being so. I don't think we'd be seeing any type of riot over aliens if they weren't in the game right now.
Kind of an opinion, not necessarily a fact.
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I'm more under the impression people feel they're better because the hype and expectations aren't as built up as they are for the EPs. They're more frequent, have less to focus on, and cost half the price, giving the illusion they are better quality.
I have no idea what is niche and what is not, I do know a lot of people declared they didn't like toddlers back in the day when Sims 4 didn't have them. People stating they wanted them to be optional if they'd ever add them (mind you, I considered this bollocks, it's a life stage fcol, but quite a few people said they had hated toddlers in the previous games). I don't hear this anymore. I have read people stating they thought they didn't want toddlers, but ha, that was before they knew what toddelrs could be like in this game. And that was my point
I don't really understand your last line? No, it's not a fact features in GP's are more fleshed out than the same features in EP's of the predecessors. Are Sims 4's restaurants and shops better than in Sims 2 for instance?
I get that making improvements could potentially change general player perspective on a concept (like it may have for toddlers), I just don't think that toddlers can be used as an example for why this would be successful with other concepts all (or even most) of the time, because as you said (and I agree), "it's a life stage fcol"
I just feel like the desire for them to constantly revisit unsuccessful, old themes and improve them, is one which prevents them from exploring new ideas or putting effort into those themes which have been successful. And I don't think it will ever work out as well as it did for toddlers in respect to any other concept. you obviously don't agree with this and that's okay!
That would be my mistake, I had assumed you were comparing GP's and EP's within ts4 rather than between series. (Although to be fair, you hadn't really given any context for that comparison there!
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I don't see them doing Pets that way. But what I could see them doing with seasons is an EP brings the weather and basic weather animations, while GPs and SPs flesh out the individual seasons (think Spooky Stuff for fall and Backyard stuff which seems very summer-time to me).
And to be honest I love this idea. Yes it might cost more, but if we could get everything we've had in the past (trick or treating, snowboarding, hot chocolate, raking) plus the addition of new features like lawn care, I would be completely set.
I don't play 4 nearly as much as 3 right now mainly because I need seasons for immersion and long legacies.
But to be fair I could see why people would be upset over having the seasonal activities broken down in GP/SP that way but I see the benefit.
SimmerJay CAS Challenge! ✨
I think I overall agree with you to some extent by the way. Of course you can't compare a life stage to a life state. People who dislike life states often do so because they don't want anything occult and unrealistic in their game. That is a choice every simmer should be able to make imo (this is coming from a huge supernatural fan
(the abduction surprised me as well, because I'm hardly a hardcore Sims 4 player and this happened long after the time when abductions were overdone in the game)(it won't surprise you I liked it
It isn't different in other types of businesses. I remember once in a furniture store that I asked for the price of some furniture they just had got. He needed to calculate the prices and did it even though I could see how he did (which wasn't very careful of him). He just multiplied the prices from the store's supplier by two. When I some years later told that to some of my students one of them commented: "I usually multiply them by 2.5 though!" I asked her about her job and she told me that she was the chief of such things in another furniture store. Those events made me understand why stores often are able to sometimes give huge discounts. (It was some years ago and I think that furniture stores now even multiply the prices from their suppliers by 3.)
The prices we pay for games as downloads are naturally not calculated in the same way. But they are set from market investigations. The game companies have experimented with different prices and current prices have been found to be most profitable because if the prices are higher then sales numbers go down too much and if they are lower then sales numbers don't increase enough. Even so there are no real connection between the prices and the costs to develop the games.
The amount of content in the games are instead minimized such that there just is enough content in each game and expansion to give acceptable sales numbers. Again the game companies have experimented and their experience is that even more content won't increase sales numbers enough to be worth it - but that it maybe would affect sales numbers too much to reduce the amount of content even more. For the Sims 4 it seems that EA now think that they put more content in the Sims 3 EPs than really needed. So EA now concentrates on smaller SPs, GPs and also EPs with slightly less content than earlier. The developers can't do anything about this if EA has reduced the budgets for each expansion like I think that EA has.
I like it to and you have a good point there is no link between quality and pack
That wouldn't have any affect on the budget. As is, every pack that is sold already has a built in amount that EA keeps as revenue, and other built in amounts that work toward paying off the investment of developing the game. Pretty much every product on the market has a markup, where the cost to produce is much less per unit than what we end up paying.
Any excess revenue would more than likely be moved into other areas of the company whether it be game development, company development, or in the pockets of the higher ups.
Additionally, with how Maxis operates now additional staff resources would probably bump up the price of all their DLC, unless they kept the staff solely working on EP's which we have been told already several people work across the various teams.
More likely the extra profit is just put on a bank account until EA finds a new investment about buying just one more of all the other game companies
Truth is GP's don't make for better more detailed stuff, they allow EA to get more cash and that's all. Open for Business had better Retail and better Dine Out than Dine Out GP and GTW EP. It also included a lifestate multiple hidden skills or badges and objects. So...it's just no excuse.
The way you describe this, getting one EP with the basics for weather/seasons and then GPs and/or SPs fleshing out the individual seasons, sounds very interesting. This way we could get all the things back we used to have in The Sims 2 and 3. I wouldn't mind to pay a little extra for this either. On the other hand, this might indeed upset people, because we were used to getting all of that in just one EP.
I do agree with you that The Sims 2 Open for Business did a much better job on retail and restaurants than Get to Work and Dine Out combined. This is true for a lot of things brought back from previous iterations to The Sims 4. I can also understand why this makes the EPs and GPs feel like cash cows. On the other hand, I have the impression that development on The Sims 4 is much more complex than it was for the previous series. This might be the reason why it costs more to produce the games. Then I can also understand the necessity on the developers part to cut features and to simplify things. It's a pity, because The Sims has always been a great game and it deserves better gameplay. I honestly think that the GPs up to now have offered better gameplay than the EPs and I believe that GPs might be the answer to most peoples' feeling that The Sims 4 lacks some depth.
I have the same impression as well. Multitasking is probably one of those big reasons why.
For example, the lounge chair situation. A lounge chair in previous versions was probably just a few animations. With multitasking in TS4, it's many animations and the devs have stated something that seems like it should be easy is more complex this time around. They've stated that what seems complex may not be, but what seems straightforward may be complex.
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and I really gtw its my favorite ep
and I like dineout and the sims 2 ob was 80 bucks