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I think the Devs ARE learning

LoanetLoanet Posts: 4,079 Member
edited September 2017 in The Sims 4 Game Feedback
Two reasons right off the bat.

First, the Community Pack event. It doesn't just work for one pack. It lets the Devs in on what the community is looking for in its Stuff. All stuff, not just Stuff Packs. You know, the current fashion among the current players. Now they know we don't need things to be shiny and futuristic; we're looking for homely and comfortable.

Second, have you noticed we get less chairs? The Devs mentioned that the wicker chairs - all types - got enough votes. But they cut out one style to make room for other objects. We get enough seating options as it is. One Sim = One butt. On the other hand, items with integrated clutter generally won out over tidier items. Ceiling lights aren't all that important - the one ceiling light we got wouldn't have gotten in if the chairs hadn't been cut. But people did vote for a floor light.

As for the clothing, well now they get that we need more kids and men's clothes, and for the clothes to be VARIED, not just a million styles of trousers.

All of this, you know they've learned for the future because when things came close in the vote, they became more flexible.

Additionally, we're getting octagonal roofs patched in - the kind of thing that can be used for circular roofs. FINALLY! And by being patched in, they can be used by anybody, anywhere, including future packs.

Who's with me?
Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
Post edited by Loanet on

Comments

  • drake_mccartydrake_mccarty Posts: 6,114 Member
    For the community SP it is still a SP that is being sold globally. Going strictly by votes can create a lopsided offering of content, in which case things would need to be balanced out to fall more in line with the other SP offerings. It's not that they are learning we don't want chairs, because the chairs were among the winning choices, which led to one being cut. That data would suggest that players want more chairs, or a greater variety of chair styles.

  • LoanetLoanet Posts: 4,079 Member
    This isn't about chairs. The concepts for the wicker chairs were very similar and the Devs seemed to realise that didn't mean they liked chairs, or we'd be getting six options for posterior cushioning. Therefore they realised it before being told. Which displays learning.
    Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
  • JoAnne65JoAnne65 Posts: 22,959 Member
    The community doesn't like chairs? Must have missed the memo.
    (I do agree they're learning by the way, well, listening)
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  • littlemissgogolittlemissgogo Posts: 1,808 Member
    I think they're wising up slowly but surely.
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  • zubrowkaszubrowkas Posts: 375 Member
    I'm only sad it took so long. I really feel that if the devs had done their initial research more thoroughly, had taken more pride in their work, had more confidence in their abilities as designers, had demanded more time, had more passion about games and gaming in general.... that they would not have put out a sub-par base game to begin with. We are still getting content that's horrendous (i.e. the dreaded ballpit) but we've also had a spike in creativity and thoughtfulness (I've been pleased to see their inclusion of ethnic hair types for instance - also most of what the community has asked for on paper has been implemented this year) so my criticism of them has softened slightly. I think they are trying and I hope they continue to move forward as there is a long way still to go.
  • elanorbretonelanorbreton Posts: 14,518 Member
    It is a pity they didn't listen to people before sims 4 was released, or it could have been a whole different success story. But then, I guess, the higher-ups made the decisions and the devs were left to pick up the pieces and scrape together something acceptable from the scrapped remains of Olympus.

    I think someone somewhere probably got into some hot water with the disasterous release and the unhappiness of the fans in the earlier days and they are trying to turn it around so that it becomes more of a success than a flop. And I think they are now often doing the right things to achieve this. It is awesome to see them corroborating to some degree with the fans regarding the eco pack. And taking note of large requests, such as the toddler addition.

    They do still fall down in places, but I am pleased with their current direction.
  • LoanetLoanet Posts: 4,079 Member
    edited September 2017
    Pft. Putting up a fight against EA in the name of taking pride in your job. Yeah, THERE'S a plan that can't possibly fail.

    No, wait, the other word.

    You really can't blame the Devs for cutting the teams and tight release dates resulting in pools being months late and not giving them the resources to make toddlers from the start and charging for aliens (and Butlers).

    You can blame the devs for samey outfits, dull hairstyles, and chairs that all look the same, of course. But this Community Pack wasn't just something the Devs could sit down and say would be amusing to base their pack on our whims. Or on polls. They realised that the reason they got all those votes for the seats wasn't because we liked chairs, but because those chairs were pretty tough to distinguish from each other.

    EA was voted worst company ever, but then it publicly admitted it was going to change its attitude from EA-First to player-first - and sent its stock price rocketing, so that's as good an incentive as any for them to ease up.

    That happened in 2016, and I think a lot of people would say this last year has been a massive improvement - free quality toddlers, Vampires that are heavily upgraded, and the Parenthood Pack which, while you pay for it, pretty much doubles your family fun. You don't get what you wanted WHEN you wanted, but thus far you've been getting it,

    It IS a shame it didn't happen sooner. But it's happening now. Better on time than late, but better late than never.

    The Devs have learned what we want and EA has learned to be not the worst company ever (possibly).
    Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
  • kremesch73kremesch73 Posts: 10,474 Member
    edited September 2017
    I don't think the problem was ever with the devs, per se. Upper management calls all the shots. They just do what they're told. They may speak up, but the decisions aren't theirs to make without a nod from the big head.

    Too bad though. It's way too little; too late for me to really care. I might have liked this game had it been managed better from the start. Hard to say.
    Dissatisfied with Sims 4 and hoping for a better Sims 5
  • andersson01andersson01 Posts: 193 Member
    Just imagine the horror if they tossed in an object too many...
    The world would be a much better place without me... I can't allow that! >:D
  • FKM100FKM100 Posts: 886 Member
    Just imagine the horror if they tossed in an object too many...

    I know - this is the part that gets me. I can just picture the acrimony at the post-release debriefing: "Hell, guys - that pack was just perfect, and then somebody insisted on putting in that completely superfluous chair. No names, but I'm looking at you, Dave!"

    Seriously, I do understand that the Devs have to keep within budget and that means trade-offs, but it's really hard to accept that one chair could be that big a deal.
  • JoAnne65JoAnne65 Posts: 22,959 Member
    zubrowkas wrote: »
    I'm only sad it took so long. I really feel that if the devs had done their initial research more thoroughly, had taken more pride in their work, had more confidence in their abilities as designers, had demanded more time, had more passion about games and gaming in general.... that they would not have put out a sub-par base game to begin with. We are still getting content that's horrendous (i.e. the dreaded ballpit) but we've also had a spike in creativity and thoughtfulness (I've been pleased to see their inclusion of ethnic hair types for instance - also most of what the community has asked for on paper has been implemented this year) so my criticism of them has softened slightly. I think they are trying and I hope they continue to move forward as there is a long way still to go.
    And it wouldn't have taken the community to spend around €400 to get it by now. I'm still very hesitant to make that investment myself. I stopped purchasing at one point, which means I'll have to buy it all at once.
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  • LoanetLoanet Posts: 4,079 Member
    Yeah, a part of me does suspect that 'Laundry' was put in there as hope for a winning vote, and there's always the suspicion that they made it go that way. Ever remember the vote SEGA held for their favorite character? They were very convenient about who they put characters up against, and then legend says Sonic won against Shadow by ten votes.

    I could even go into politics and give you examples of when democracy goes wrong. Oh no, I wouldn't be at all surprised if we're all being led here. How would we know otherwise, after all?

    But people were mentioning Laundry anyway. Laundry was in Sims 3. General concensus is that all of those packs in the vote are being considered in due time. They've got to think of SOMETHING for it to go up against in a vote. I noticed that a chunk of the things in the 'Style' pictures weren't among the concept art. Laundry is a terrible name though.

    I still think things are changing though. And changing for the better.
    Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
  • TriplisTriplis Posts: 3,048 Member
    kwanzaabot wrote: »
    This is my biggest complaint.
    The wedding/funeral packs sounded great, and would've won. I mean, nobody cared about "Eco Living".

    What they cared about, was "laundry". This has been obvious from the day TS4 was released. People demanded pets, toddlers, ghosts, pools, vampires... and laundry.

    So then, when the vote came for gameplay objects to include in "the laundry pack", unsurprisingly, everyone votes for laundry.

    I strongly believe that they would've made this pack regardless of the vote results. It was just designed to placate the fans.

    That said, I'm glad the gurus have actually been including us in the development of the pack. Explaining the design process, showing screenshots... but they were never NOT going to make this pack.
    I thought there was a statement on it something along the lines of they pulled the concepts from stuff that the community was asking for. That Laundry happened to be far more popular is probably just happenstance. They had to choose concepts that were small enough to fit in a stuff pack (that they weren't otherwise going to add to the game) and a lot of what the community asks for on a popular level (by what I've seen, anyway) is GP/EP level requests. Big, sprawling feature sets.

    I honestly believe they were just trying to do a nice thing, while keeping the business end of things happy at the same time.

    The idea that they rigged it for Laundry is giving them too much credit. They are game devs, not evil masterminds. EA has made some dreadfully poor decisions in the past, but they are obviously not masterminds at the corporate level either... if they were, people would think they are saints.

    Not to mention the fact that they called the laundry-included option Eco Living in the beginning, not Laundry. That would be pretty deep levels of deception to call it by something else and include Laundry as an option to make it appear like it's not about laundry.

    It's a good story, but reality is generally pretty boring and unlike the movies, people tend to be really bad at doing deceptive things in RL. That's not to say they don't try, but it's usually gonna come out sooner or later when they do and generally not because someone pieced things together in story-detective style.

    Investigative fiction story logic is, for the most part, built on the fact that writers are generally not, themselves, master investigators. So they make the villains so stupid that the heroes look like geniuses by contrast. Then they have all of the characters react to the villain's actions as if the villain is a genius and the heroes are just slightly more genius enough to overcome them, thereby constructing a believable narrative that is perceived as desired. Sometimes this goes horribly wrong and the audience sees through it, ending up with a mocking opinion of both the heroes and the villains.

    In short: When people do deceptive things, they generally aren't clever about it or think it through. This is probably due, in part, to the fact that most people have moral standards and would feel bad about spending an inordinate amount of time planning something that is actively deceptive.
    Mods moved from MTS, now hosted at: https://triplis.github.io
  • JoAnne65JoAnne65 Posts: 22,959 Member
    I don't like laundry in this game. When they gave it to us in Sims 3 I tried it for one generation and that confirmed that nope, no fun for me. The thing is, I never had a feeling I missed out on something great and incomparable because of this laundry thing, because they never made me feel other content was sacrificed because of it. Ambitions came with laundry, I don't use it, no big deal. Had there been a competition Sims 4 style, laundry or a tomb like adventure in Twinbrook, I'd have been highly frustrated to this very day. I don't like this voting for content to begin with and the fact they're indeed clearly manipulating it makes it even worse. If a significant chunk of the fanbase calls out for laundry, implement laundry. But don't add this totally silly feeling one simmer's voice is more important than the other. Just because a majority won't immediately recognize great content as great content, doesn't mean it can't turn out to be great content after all. As for me, almost everything will beat laundry.
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  • samlyt22samlyt22 Posts: 527 Member
    I voted for Eco living because I wanted eco living, nothing to do with laundry, I'm sure I'm not the only one. The idea that they must have rigged the vote is just silly, they have nothing to gain from that, they selected options that they were happy to make and let us pick which one to focus on. Just because some don't like the outcome of a vote doesn't mean we need to start conspiracy theories. Remember as well that we were voting on 4 options which means whichever wins wouldn't have been the one that the majority wanted, it would just have more votes than each of the other categories.

    I do think things are improving and they are learning but I think that's just a natural thing that happens as time goes on. They've clearly been listening to what we want but in the beginning we wouldn't have had as much feedback for them. As time goes on we can tell them more about what we like and don't like in what they've brought out. For example with Get to Work, I'm sure there was plenty of information from previous games about people wanting active careers and how they felt they should work, yet I doubt many thought to specify that they wanted the lots to be in the world and accessible anytime since it wouldn't have occurred to us that they wouldn't do that. Likewise when talking about wanting to own restaurants I doubt many would have specified wanting to be able to be the chef as it seems obvious, so they might have felt it wasn't the part that people were bothered about. Now they've done it differently for the veterinary career. I think we just need to keep giving feedback and be as clear and specific as possible.
  • merrydyth312merrydyth312 Posts: 1 New Member
    I suppose they are, but this has just shown me that I'm not the typical Sims consumer. Glass half full view: I've saved/will save a lot of money. I've no interest in ever getting Vampires or Toddler Stuff. I won't be getting Cats & Dogs, and I don't know what the release plans are for the "Eco" laundry pack, but I won't be getting that either. Parenthood, I will say, was A+ content, in my opinion, and I enjoy it very much.

    Vampires was the very first Sims (1, 2, 3, or 4) expansion that I didn't buy. *shrug* I guess I'm finally outgrowing the franchise. Which actually makes me a little sad but it is what it is.

    Cities Skylines has announced a Green City expansion (that is actually eco-conscious!) and I am miles more excited for that than most of what the Sims team is offering lately.
  • LoanetLoanet Posts: 4,079 Member
    In today's patch, we got a fix for the Toddler Ball Pit.

    I think they must have looked at their list of things for toddlers and said "We've never had a ball pit before."

    If you've been watching the Community Pack, you'll now know that animated, functioning objects are the last to be coloured in. Logically the Pit had been through concept, then function, and by the time it was coloured in, it was too late to make it a sand pit or paddling pool. "We've never had a ball-pit before, and now we know why."

    But they're learning and they're listening, and it's less than a month and a nice new skin that looks so much better. That's the sort of thing they need to remember about.
    Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
  • CinebarCinebar Posts: 33,618 Member
    edited September 2017
    Loanet wrote: »
    In today's patch, we got a fix for the Toddler Ball Pit.

    I think they must have looked at their list of things for toddlers and said "We've never had a ball pit before."

    If you've been watching the Community Pack, you'll now know that animated, functioning objects are the last to be coloured in. Logically the Pit had been through concept, then function, and by the time it was coloured in, it was too late to make it a sand pit or paddling pool. "We've never had a ball-pit before, and now we know why."

    But they're learning and they're listening, and it's less than a month and a nice new skin that looks so much better. That's the sort of thing they need to remember about.

    omg, do you know some of these people (behind the scenes and they aren't producers we see all the time) have been creating, object building, designing, 3D modeling, skinning, animating for The Sims for twenty years? Learning? lol Maybe it's time to stop outsourcing TS4 and let the real people who know how to do this stuff right, back onto the payroll.
    "Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
  • CinebarCinebar Posts: 33,618 Member
    For the community SP it is still a SP that is being sold globally. Going strictly by votes can create a lopsided offering of content, in which case things would need to be balanced out to fall more in line with the other SP offerings. It's not that they are learning we don't want chairs, because the chairs were among the winning choices, which led to one being cut. That data would suggest that players want more chairs, or a greater variety of chair styles.

    They also heavily swayed the voting in a way that could've easily been avoided, simply by making the vote between a bunch of new game concepts and laundry, which was already highly in demand.

    Good point. It's like asking Hey, do you want laundry or a wicker chair? Now, what do they think would win?
    "Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
  • LoanetLoanet Posts: 4,079 Member
    edited September 2017
    Cinebar wrote: »
    For the community SP it is still a SP that is being sold globally. Going strictly by votes can create a lopsided offering of content, in which case things would need to be balanced out to fall more in line with the other SP offerings. It's not that they are learning we don't want chairs, because the chairs were among the winning choices, which led to one being cut. That data would suggest that players want more chairs, or a greater variety of chair styles.

    They also heavily swayed the voting in a way that could've easily been avoided, simply by making the vote between a bunch of new game concepts and laundry, which was already highly in demand.

    Good point. It's like asking Hey, do you want laundry or a wicker chair? Now, what do they think would win?

    So, you're basically saying that the Devs made the entire pack already and the votes are rigged? Sure, we can't sit around the table and discuss concepts with them... but just because your choice didn't win doesn't mean it was rigged.

    Okay, it might be a little bit. But they're not evil geniuses, y'know.
    Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
  • comicsforlifecomicsforlife Posts: 9,585 Member
    edited September 2017
    there people that are trying there best and their kind enough to talk to us even though they don't have to
    some people can be really rude online but there good at dealing with them

    people on twiter say a lot mean things to them I don't know if I would want a job like that
    more for sim kids and more drama please
  • GoldenBuffyGoldenBuffy Posts: 4,025 Member
    Loanet wrote: »
    In today's patch, we got a fix for the Toddler Ball Pit.

    I think they must have looked at their list of things for toddlers and said "We've never had a ball pit before."

    If you've been watching the Community Pack, you'll now know that animated, functioning objects are the last to be coloured in. Logically the Pit had been through concept, then function, and by the time it was coloured in, it was too late to make it a sand pit or paddling pool. "We've never had a ball-pit before, and now we know why."

    But they're learning and they're listening, and it's less than a month and a nice new skin that looks so much better. That's the sort of thing they need to remember about.

    They made a small fix to the object based solely on community feedback. They aren't learning, because they had the ability to do this in the first place. Had the community not spoken up this would not have been changed. It just goes to show the bare minimum they do for these packs and how the community needs to continue to hold them accountable when their work is substandard.

    I agree with you. But it does show that even if it were just one object, that if our voices are loud enough they will do something about it. I feel that way with toddlers as well. I think after they moved a certain someone out, things are trying to move in the right direction. But I could be wrong. Guess time will only tell.
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