It's very sad for me to be here talking about it, but after what I saw in yesterday's trailer, unfortunately I see myself with no choices.
The snow of The Sims 4 Seasons doesn't have depth level as in The Sims 2 and The Sims 3. Yes, that's exactly it. Basically all they just did was change the texture of the floor to something with a whitish appearance and just that. It's like the "First Snow" mod in which the texture of the floor changes, and the only difference between the mod and what we see in The Sims 4 Seasons is that in the expansion pack the Sims have specific interactions for the snow in the winter period, and the texture of the snow disappears automatically when another season of the year arrives.
For me, personally, this is a very big disappointment. Winter was always one of my favorite seasons because of all the drastic visual change going on in the neighborhood, and the level of snow depth was one of the coolest features that was provided, especially in The Sims 3 where there were 3 different levels depths: low, medium and high.
What left me still more disappointed was the roof of the houses during the winter. It seems they threw a bucket of white paint on the roof and what we see in the pictures is the end result of the prank.
If I did not know this is from an expansion pack, I could say it was the work of some modder.
Meanwhile, in The Sims 3 we have depth levels of snow that even affect the roof. In addition, the texture is very beautiful
Reproduction of similar house made in The Sims 3,
Even though the image of the gif is small, we can already see the grotesque difference between The Sims 4 and The Sims 3.
Now see these two pictures taken from The Sims 4 Seasons trailer. As you can see, in both images, the Sims' feet are on top of what the snow would be like. There is no level of depth at all.
I even considered the possibility that, in fact, they just did not show the levels of depth of the snow in the trailer, but not just in the trailer, but in the images that the producers have already made available, it's always the same thing.
In The Sims 3, snow levels are there. Low, medium and high.
The interesting thing about The Sims 3 is that it is not possible to build snowmen when the level of snow depth is low at the level of the Sims feet. The game requires that the snow be at a higher depth level so that the Sims can make the snowmen.
I know some people may come up arguing that maybe this has been done in The Sims 4 Seasons so the game does not get so slow but well ... graphic options exist for that, right? What's more, there are people with powerful computers who quietly support many layers of snow.
Please, right, we're in 2018, The Sims 3 Seasons was released 6 years ago. Even The Sims 2 Seasons that was released 12 years ago have levels of depth in the snow.
What is happening? Is this one more of the limitations that are always present in the expansion packs of The Sims 4?
Unfortunately we are less than a month from the launch of The Sims 4 Seasons, so it is unlikely that any positive changes will be made in the same period.
Fortunately, I'm not the only one who noticed this problem with snow, and I've seen several people commenting on Twitter.
Happy Seasons for all, and enjoy the winter.
Comments
I agree with every word.
Have you seen the fall leaves that look like flat texture paint. Not to mention I feel this season's has far less features than sims 3 seasons and nothing redeeming.
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The Sims 3 snow's roof texture is hideous imo, looks like something you'd see in an early 2000's game.
The Sims 4's also looks bad, but I do like that they made parts of the roof visible through the snow. It's not just a static texture.
The Sims 3's snow texture on the roof is literally terrible and is super Low Quality.
Neither games do it as well as they could, so it's not really a huge loss. If The Sims 3 actually looked good by comparison, I would be annoyed.
Also, The Sims 3's snow DOES NOT suit the semi-realistic graphic style of the world,
while The Sims 4's suits the art style.
The Sims 2 probably did it best, and even then it looks pretty bad:
It's probably something that causes a lot of lag, so they are maybe extremely limited with it.
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Hope so. I want to find out what they're going to say. But I think I know what it is: "if we had added depth into the snow, we could not have done anything else."
In fact, I believe the visible part of the roof is probably where the mouse cursor was located when the image was made, although I didn't see any kind of utility in it. And even though it may be to show a visible part of the roof, the way it was made does not seem appropriate or pretty, visibly speaking.
But of course, it's all about personal opinion, as you really pointed out. But it's a good thing that many people share the same opinion about the poor quality of snow under the roof, which looks like a white paint made by modder, but also because of the lack of depth in the snow.
We have to be careful, there are chances of no snow in The Sims 5 Seasons but still have people happy about it.
And I think it's very easy to argue over issues related to the game's performance to justify all the thousands of limitations that The Sims 4 has imposed since it was released, totally disregarding not only the fact that we are in 2018 but also all the technological advances that we have.
If this is really a performance issue, make a graphical option that allows players to turn on or off an obstacle for less powerful machines. It's not fair for Simmers who own more powerful machines lose graphic features on behalf of another part of the public.
Honestly I think it is funny - we have seen only a small part of "Seasons" and we don't know everything and yet there are a couple of discussion about things we don't know yet. So, why not wait until we have "Seasons"? Until then "destroyed snow" sounds a bit melodramatic to me...
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1. We did have screenshots but none of them showed it during a heavy snowfall.(I know there is a teaser in Windenburg but still it isn't sure yet.)
2. They still don't talk about seasons. All of the seasons in fact all of the information about each seasons are pretty vague and I doubt they are answering it until they are ready to talk about each season.
3. Having a heavy snowfall but no snow depth? I don't think its something they want to do. But then again there are still a lot of things about each seasons that we still don't know. We just have to wait and see. This is just the announcement trailer by the way. Kinda like Clubs even the clubs in Get Together aren't shown on the trailer, there are some details about adding groups, etc. but none are so in depth until they are ready to talk about it. Let's hope that next week we can get new information.
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/924539/features-that-needs-depth-and-ways-to-improve
Well hopefully, unlike the ball pit, if it is that shallow , like doing snow angles on a flat white ground (in the teaser) then maybe they might implement depth before release. But this is S4 and they know that people will just accept it and say flat white colored terrain is a leap forward and the best thing ever
I always lose my cats in the snow in Sims 3, all you can see are their tails!
Sims 4 snow looks painted on.
The thing is, even with this little bit of criticism, EA set themselves up for this kind of scrutiny beginning with and even before the launch of The Sims 4. It's their own fault people have this kind of mistrust and skepticism. If people are used to being continuously disappointed, even with something they initially thought they would like or love then of course everyone in that category is going to look deeper and more critically into everything they do. They've been burned before. They want to be happy and excited like everyone else but the last time they got excited they probably got disappointed in the end. I should know, I'm one of them. EA and Maxis will have to work to earn the trust back. The switch isn't going to flip for everyone with just one EP.
Also, it was just with the last EP when everyone was a stickler for realism and now when people point out realism here in the instance of snow some people want to shoot them down. I don't understand it. First of all, no one's criticism should bring down another person's enjoyment or happiness with something. People dislike, are more critical of or even hate things I think are awesome but I don't let that stop me or put a damper on my enjoyment unless they're making a valid point. Even then sometimes it doesn't matter, I'm still going to like what I like.
Puppies, kittens, and small animals get lost in the snow. It happens. That's realistic. My youngest dog when he was a puppy could barely be seen in the snow or even the huge accumulation of leaves in our yard. We could literally only see his little tail sticking out. My older dog when it snowed so heavily one year it was over 17 inches had to step so high he lifted his front paws to his his head and the back ones up to his sides to walk. I laughed so hard when I saw him trying to do his buisness. We also lost objects in the yard after it snowed and unless I walked outside to go find them before the snow stuck and got higher they couldn't be found until the snow cleared. That's realistic. And snow would accumulate so much on people's roofs to the point it'd damage them there was so much snow. They even warned home owners on the news to be careful because some of them were trying to clear snow and ice from their roofs and falling off of them. We're in the southern part of the US so we don't often get snow or even winter here, but when we get it, we get it.
To the issue of lag due to heavy accumulation, I have never experienced that so I can't actually speak to that. My game, even when I played on a low end laptop never lagged in heavy snow or heavy rain. That's odd, but instead of limiting everyone because it lags for some people how about finding a way to make it work for all people? Why do we always let them get off with doing the least whether it's because when they did the most it affected our gameplay or because we think the least is better than not at all? Some of us act like it's impossible to have a well thought out, well functioning game that strives to be the absolute best. Some of us would also rather hold the game back than let it be great.
Yesterday (because I was still so hyped from the announcement) I could not stand any of the simmers' criticisms, simply because this is something we've all been waiting for since the game's launch, if this can't make people happy, then what can?
Now, however, I've realised that we've been waiting for this since the game launched, so of course we will criticise the game when there's something wrong, because we want this pack to be perfect! Even The Sims 2 could handle thick layers of snow - why should we be happy with retextured grass? I don't think this is an excuse to bash the producers, however we should instead be pushing them to do this pack justice!
I'm reluctant to think that we will get the snow we expect when the game launches, however I'm just praying that with the amount of controversy this has caused, the producers are working hard to correct this, and release the snow mechanism that we expect within a future update (hopefully not too longer after the expansion pack releases).
I'm really sad about all this ...
If this is indeed how they designed Seasons to be, to follow unique climates in each map, then I would say it might be the most immersive Seasons expansion yet. But if the snow is indeed just made to look like terrain paint, then I agree it would be a big disappointment. But I think it's wise to stay tuned for more information before jumping to conclusions just yet.
This would be horrible, because it would mean that if you want to actually experience deep snow, you need to buy Get Together, or Cats and Dogs just for their worlds - thus resulting in the same problem My First Pet Stuff fell into, relying on other packs to complete this pack!
I wouldn't mind this idea, however if they're going to introduce thick snow, it absolutely must be available in at least 1 base game world (with Willow Creek being the obvious choice).
That's why I mentioned Newcrest. But I can see them not using Newcrest for the trailer because they'd have to put a bunch of builds on the lots first to complete it. So I think they chose to make it snow in Willow Creek for the same reason you mentioned; because if Oasis Springs is already a desert and intended as a warmer climate, they wouldn't want Willow Creek to be too similar. So it's also possible we just haven't seen the effects of a full-on blizzard there, only a light winter. All of this is just my own theory, of course, I'm just going by the info that we have to work with.
I am lmao and thinking about those cat tails in the snow.
Sims 3.
If that’s hideous 2000’s, give me hideous 2000’s, I’m perfectly fine with it.
As for sinking in deep snow.
That’s what happens.
(needless to say I agree with the OP, thanks for creating those gifs)
If there is no snow accumulation and it’s just the thin white layer, that looks a little disappointing. It will be the first for the series. Even the sims 2 has two layers of snow accumulation- light and heavy. If the sims 4 just has the one.... thats not good.