I don't think the game is catering to "potato laptops" with the loading screens. I think this is a misconception. Even though TS4 works on lower-end computers which is good, the playing experience seems to center higher-end ones. For example, loading screens only appear for a few seconds on high-end gaming computers so they're not that big of a deal even with all packs and tons of mods/CC. However, for slower computers, I think it takes 30 seconds to a few minutes to travel between lots, which is probably annoying... It would be great if there weren't any loading screens and the game let us play with 50 Sims on a lot, etc. but many of the people concerned about this seem to be those with slow loading times. If it takes a long time to load lots, it's also likely that the computer might struggle with processing multiple units on a single lot if we were able to view them all at once. TS4 simulates a lot of different stuff in the background and it's not that easy of a game to run if there are 50+ Sims on a lot with a bunch of interactive objects.
Tons of toggles add complexity to the game and complicate listed system requirements, so there's probably reluctance to add a bunch of toggles in the option menu. Instead, they made the game easy to mod and more advanced users can use mods to increase household size or the number of Sims allowed on a lot.
I just hope that this pack isn't buggy.
I think even the presence of the loading screens, however short, are kind of immersion breaking. They’re super jarring when you just want to visit your neighbor for instance. But even aside from that, they limit gameplay. If I want a sim to say hi to their neighbors, I can only load one lot. I can’t have some sims socialize at home, and then others greet their neighbors. I essentially have to choose only one sim to follow and let the rest of the household meander offscreen.
What if I want my teen sims to hangout at their friend’s house, while also having their parents work on skills, and the children socialize with a different household? In Sims 3 and Sims 2 Apartment Life, I could focus both on having certain sims socialize in different houses/apartments, while also focusing on developing other sims at home.
And I don’t think optional toggles would up the system requirements. They just have to list the minimum requirements, and these optional toggles are optional and not necessary so the system requirements wouldn’t be any more intensive than they are now. Have a certain default, and then if players want, they can up the default settings to match their system. Meanwhile, other players who can’t handle it can just keep their systems at the default minimum requirements without any hassle.
You certainly couldn't load multiple apartments at the same time in TS2. If you wanted to see your neighbours you had to either visit them or meet them in the shared space. As for TS4, it's possible to call your neighbours and friends to come over and visit you on your lot or some community lot, and you can also hang out with them in shared neighbourhood space. You don't need to go visit them on their lot if you don't want to deal with loading screens. Also, you often see and meet your neighbours in the street outside your house if you only want to say hi to them and many times they come and visit on their own. As for checking on several sims at the same time on different lots, that just isn't fun or easily doable, that's why TS3 enthusiasts loved the rabbithole buildings, because they could just send their sims there and get them out of the active lot while pretending they are doing something. In TS4 you can get pretty much a similar experience to TS3 if you try to make full use of the neighbourhood space, especially if you choose to play in a neighbourhood that offers plenty of activities with food stands, playgrounds and festivals.
I think what I was imagining and hoping for was like TS2’s apartment system where units that weren’t your’s were blacked out and not loaded, and only loaded once you knocked on their door. That way you save resources by only rendering your own active unit, but also avoid loading screens when you want to visit neighbors.
And I’d argue it is fun to check in on multiple sims on multiple lots. That’s why a lot of players loved TS3 Ambitions, they could follow their sims at work, and then when that got boring they could focus on the rest of the household. I myself used to have my household everywhere, with teen sims hanging out at parks, parent sims cooking meals at home, etc. A lot of people actually hated the rabbit holes in TS3. It just makes for smoother gameplay to send a sim somewhere without loading screens.
We don't know what the loading screens will be like and we'll need to wait for the livestream to find out. I will argue that rabbitholes are not gameplay, it's just a system to park your unneeded sims that are getting in the way of playing and are completely useless when you tend to play single sims. Depending on neighbourhood you're playing in TS4, you can still send your sim out there out of the house to do something else, while you focus on other sims cooking on their home lot. There is nothing you can achieve on another's sims home lot that you can't do on your own lot and just being able to check in on them once in a while on a whim doesn't make-up for the fact that your neighbourhoods and community lots are overall devoid of sims and many of the said community lots are in fact rabbitholes. Yes, you will need to load a community lot in order to play in it in TS4, but then you get a fully playable lot full of sims instead of just a rabbithole and in my opinion that's a plus. You can even earn money in several ways in self-employed type careers, without leaving your lot and neighbourhood if you want active type careers, so you only load other lots because you want to not because you have to.
I agree that rabbit holes aren’t really gameplay, but I’m saying TS3’s open world was amazing because you could have sims on multiple active lots at the same time. Everything that is a rabbit hole in TS3 is still a rabbit hole in TS4, so it’s not like TS4 has improved on anything. Bars, parks, hangouts, festivals, nectaries, etc. are all active lots in TS3. I can have one sim buying stuff at the consignment store, another checking out the festival, and then one at a bar. You just can’t do that in TS4.
A lot of people like TS3 because they can load multiple active lots at once, something that’s impossible in TS4.
And even the argument against rabbit holes equally applies to TS4 as it does TS3. TS4 has just as many rabbit holes (most careers, elementary school, movie theaters, etc).
The only problem with TS3 active lots, was that they were empty. You went to the park, it was empty, you went to the bar, it was also empty, all the so called active lots were empty or almost empty with just a cashier or a bartender tending to the lot. And sometimes they were closed too. I said it before that this type of open neighbourhood is useless and not fun to me. If I want my sims to drink alone, they can do so at home. I take my sims to community lots to raise their fun and to socialize and meet and befriend other sims, and to busk for tips and sell their merchandise, how are they going to do that if there is no one else on the lots? I also get to see what my other sims are getting up to when I am not actively playing them and I may incorporate some event into their storyline next time I play them.
Not enough sims, too many community lots, and a weak CPU was usually why community lots were empty. TS3 gadges the amount of sims to push onto lots by CPU power. When patches stopped, the game could no longer properly detect new hardware. It's supposed to default to ultra but sometimes it doesn't and you have to manually adjust info via game files.
I don't think the game is catering to "potato laptops" with the loading screens. I think this is a misconception. Even though TS4 works on lower-end computers which is good, the playing experience seems to center higher-end ones. For example, loading screens only appear for a few seconds on high-end gaming computers so they're not that big of a deal even with all packs and tons of mods/CC. However, for slower computers, I think it takes 30 seconds to a few minutes to travel between lots, which is probably annoying... It would be great if there weren't any loading screens and the game let us play with 50 Sims on a lot, etc. but many of the people concerned about this seem to be those with slow loading times. If it takes a long time to load lots, it's also likely that the computer might struggle with processing multiple units on a single lot if we were able to view them all at once. TS4 simulates a lot of different stuff in the background and it's not that easy of a game to run if there are 50+ Sims on a lot with a bunch of interactive objects.
Tons of toggles add complexity to the game and complicate listed system requirements, so there's probably reluctance to add a bunch of toggles in the option menu. Instead, they made the game easy to mod and more advanced users can use mods to increase household size or the number of Sims allowed on a lot.
I just hope that this pack isn't buggy.
I think even the presence of the loading screens, however short, are kind of immersion breaking. They’re super jarring when you just want to visit your neighbor for instance. But even aside from that, they limit gameplay. If I want a sim to say hi to their neighbors, I can only load one lot. I can’t have some sims socialize at home, and then others greet their neighbors. I essentially have to choose only one sim to follow and let the rest of the household meander offscreen.
What if I want my teen sims to hangout at their friend’s house, while also having their parents work on skills, and the children socialize with a different household? In Sims 3 and Sims 2 Apartment Life, I could focus both on having certain sims socialize in different houses/apartments, while also focusing on developing other sims at home.
And I don’t think optional toggles would up the system requirements. They just have to list the minimum requirements, and these optional toggles are optional and not necessary so the system requirements wouldn’t be any more intensive than they are now. Have a certain default, and then if players want, they can up the default settings to match their system. Meanwhile, other players who can’t handle it can just keep their systems at the default minimum requirements without any hassle.
You certainly couldn't load multiple apartments at the same time in TS2. If you wanted to see your neighbours you had to either visit them or meet them in the shared space. As for TS4, it's possible to call your neighbours and friends to come over and visit you on your lot or some community lot, and you can also hang out with them in shared neighbourhood space. You don't need to go visit them on their lot if you don't want to deal with loading screens. Also, you often see and meet your neighbours in the street outside your house if you only want to say hi to them and many times they come and visit on their own. As for checking on several sims at the same time on different lots, that just isn't fun or easily doable, that's why TS3 enthusiasts loved the rabbithole buildings, because they could just send their sims there and get them out of the active lot while pretending they are doing something. In TS4 you can get pretty much a similar experience to TS3 if you try to make full use of the neighbourhood space, especially if you choose to play in a neighbourhood that offers plenty of activities with food stands, playgrounds and festivals.
I think what I was imagining and hoping for was like TS2’s apartment system where units that weren’t your’s were blacked out and not loaded, and only loaded once you knocked on their door. That way you save resources by only rendering your own active unit, but also avoid loading screens when you want to visit neighbors.
And I’d argue it is fun to check in on multiple sims on multiple lots. That’s why a lot of players loved TS3 Ambitions, they could follow their sims at work, and then when that got boring they could focus on the rest of the household. I myself used to have my household everywhere, with teen sims hanging out at parks, parent sims cooking meals at home, etc. A lot of people actually hated the rabbit holes in TS3. It just makes for smoother gameplay to send a sim somewhere without loading screens.
We don't know what the loading screens will be like and we'll need to wait for the livestream to find out. I will argue that rabbitholes are not gameplay, it's just a system to park your unneeded sims that are getting in the way of playing and are completely useless when you tend to play single sims. Depending on neighbourhood you're playing in TS4, you can still send your sim out there out of the house to do something else, while you focus on other sims cooking on their home lot. There is nothing you can achieve on another's sims home lot that you can't do on your own lot and just being able to check in on them once in a while on a whim doesn't make-up for the fact that your neighbourhoods and community lots are overall devoid of sims and many of the said community lots are in fact rabbitholes. Yes, you will need to load a community lot in order to play in it in TS4, but then you get a fully playable lot full of sims instead of just a rabbithole and in my opinion that's a plus. You can even earn money in several ways in self-employed type careers, without leaving your lot and neighbourhood if you want active type careers, so you only load other lots because you want to not because you have to.
I agree that rabbit holes aren’t really gameplay, but I’m saying TS3’s open world was amazing because you could have sims on multiple active lots at the same time. Everything that is a rabbit hole in TS3 is still a rabbit hole in TS4, so it’s not like TS4 has improved on anything. Bars, parks, hangouts, festivals, nectaries, etc. are all active lots in TS3. I can have one sim buying stuff at the consignment store, another checking out the festival, and then one at a bar. You just can’t do that in TS4.
A lot of people like TS3 because they can load multiple active lots at once, something that’s impossible in TS4.
And even the argument against rabbit holes equally applies to TS4 as it does TS3. TS4 has just as many rabbit holes (most careers, elementary school, movie theaters, etc).
The only problem with TS3 active lots, was that they were empty. You went to the park, it was empty, you went to the bar, it was also empty, all the so called active lots were empty or almost empty with just a cashier or a bartender tending to the lot. And sometimes they were closed too. I said it before that this type of open neighbourhood is useless and not fun to me. If I want my sims to drink alone, they can do so at home. I take my sims to community lots to raise their fun and to socialize and meet and befriend other sims, and to busk for tips and sell their merchandise, how are they going to do that if there is no one else on the lots? I also get to see what my other sims are getting up to when I am not actively playing them and I may incorporate some event into their storyline next time I play them.
Not enough sims, too many community lots, and a weak CPU was usually why community lots were empty. TS3 gadges the amount of sims to push onto lots by CPU power. When patches stopped, the game could no longer properly detect new hardware. It's supposed to default to ultra but sometimes it doesn't and you have to manually adjust info via game files.
This was an issue since basegame. Even at the rabbithole bistro there were no other sims beside my own. And sometimes they came on a lot and left after 5 minutes in game time, you barely had time to greet them. Anyway, I prefer TS4 because now there are 20 sims on a lot when I visit instead of 20 sims spread out over the entire neighbourhood that I never get to meet.
The only thing I can see from the trailer is snooping into rented spaces. I hope there is a reinforced door upgrade to doors, a lot trait that prevents it, or maybe even a pack setting option.
I don't think the game is catering to "potato laptops" with the loading screens. I think this is a misconception. Even though TS4 works on lower-end computers which is good, the playing experience seems to center higher-end ones. For example, loading screens only appear for a few seconds on high-end gaming computers so they're not that big of a deal even with all packs and tons of mods/CC. However, for slower computers, I think it takes 30 seconds to a few minutes to travel between lots, which is probably annoying... It would be great if there weren't any loading screens and the game let us play with 50 Sims on a lot, etc. but many of the people concerned about this seem to be those with slow loading times. If it takes a long time to load lots, it's also likely that the computer might struggle with processing multiple units on a single lot if we were able to view them all at once. TS4 simulates a lot of different stuff in the background and it's not that easy of a game to run if there are 50+ Sims on a lot with a bunch of interactive objects.
Tons of toggles add complexity to the game and complicate listed system requirements, so there's probably reluctance to add a bunch of toggles in the option menu. Instead, they made the game easy to mod and more advanced users can use mods to increase household size or the number of Sims allowed on a lot.
I just hope that this pack isn't buggy.
I think even the presence of the loading screens, however short, are kind of immersion breaking. They’re super jarring when you just want to visit your neighbor for instance. But even aside from that, they limit gameplay. If I want a sim to say hi to their neighbors, I can only load one lot. I can’t have some sims socialize at home, and then others greet their neighbors. I essentially have to choose only one sim to follow and let the rest of the household meander offscreen.
What if I want my teen sims to hangout at their friend’s house, while also having their parents work on skills, and the children socialize with a different household? In Sims 3 and Sims 2 Apartment Life, I could focus both on having certain sims socialize in different houses/apartments, while also focusing on developing other sims at home.
And I don’t think optional toggles would up the system requirements. They just have to list the minimum requirements, and these optional toggles are optional and not necessary so the system requirements wouldn’t be any more intensive than they are now. Have a certain default, and then if players want, they can up the default settings to match their system. Meanwhile, other players who can’t handle it can just keep their systems at the default minimum requirements without any hassle.
You certainly couldn't load multiple apartments at the same time in TS2. If you wanted to see your neighbours you had to either visit them or meet them in the shared space. As for TS4, it's possible to call your neighbours and friends to come over and visit you on your lot or some community lot, and you can also hang out with them in shared neighbourhood space. You don't need to go visit them on their lot if you don't want to deal with loading screens. Also, you often see and meet your neighbours in the street outside your house if you only want to say hi to them and many times they come and visit on their own. As for checking on several sims at the same time on different lots, that just isn't fun or easily doable, that's why TS3 enthusiasts loved the rabbithole buildings, because they could just send their sims there and get them out of the active lot while pretending they are doing something. In TS4 you can get pretty much a similar experience to TS3 if you try to make full use of the neighbourhood space, especially if you choose to play in a neighbourhood that offers plenty of activities with food stands, playgrounds and festivals.
I think what I was imagining and hoping for was like TS2’s apartment system where units that weren’t your’s were blacked out and not loaded, and only loaded once you knocked on their door. That way you save resources by only rendering your own active unit, but also avoid loading screens when you want to visit neighbors.
And I’d argue it is fun to check in on multiple sims on multiple lots. That’s why a lot of players loved TS3 Ambitions, they could follow their sims at work, and then when that got boring they could focus on the rest of the household. I myself used to have my household everywhere, with teen sims hanging out at parks, parent sims cooking meals at home, etc. A lot of people actually hated the rabbit holes in TS3. It just makes for smoother gameplay to send a sim somewhere without loading screens.
We don't know what the loading screens will be like and we'll need to wait for the livestream to find out. I will argue that rabbitholes are not gameplay, it's just a system to park your unneeded sims that are getting in the way of playing and are completely useless when you tend to play single sims. Depending on neighbourhood you're playing in TS4, you can still send your sim out there out of the house to do something else, while you focus on other sims cooking on their home lot. There is nothing you can achieve on another's sims home lot that you can't do on your own lot and just being able to check in on them once in a while on a whim doesn't make-up for the fact that your neighbourhoods and community lots are overall devoid of sims and many of the said community lots are in fact rabbitholes. Yes, you will need to load a community lot in order to play in it in TS4, but then you get a fully playable lot full of sims instead of just a rabbithole and in my opinion that's a plus. You can even earn money in several ways in self-employed type careers, without leaving your lot and neighbourhood if you want active type careers, so you only load other lots because you want to not because you have to.
I agree that rabbit holes aren’t really gameplay, but I’m saying TS3’s open world was amazing because you could have sims on multiple active lots at the same time. Everything that is a rabbit hole in TS3 is still a rabbit hole in TS4, so it’s not like TS4 has improved on anything. Bars, parks, hangouts, festivals, nectaries, etc. are all active lots in TS3. I can have one sim buying stuff at the consignment store, another checking out the festival, and then one at a bar. You just can’t do that in TS4.
A lot of people like TS3 because they can load multiple active lots at once, something that’s impossible in TS4.
And even the argument against rabbit holes equally applies to TS4 as it does TS3. TS4 has just as many rabbit holes (most careers, elementary school, movie theaters, etc).
The only problem with TS3 active lots, was that they were empty. You went to the park, it was empty, you went to the bar, it was also empty, all the so called active lots were empty or almost empty with just a cashier or a bartender tending to the lot. And sometimes they were closed too. I said it before that this type of open neighbourhood is useless and not fun to me. If I want my sims to drink alone, they can do so at home. I take my sims to community lots to raise their fun and to socialize and meet and befriend other sims, and to busk for tips and sell their merchandise, how are they going to do that if there is no one else on the lots? I also get to see what my other sims are getting up to when I am not actively playing them and I may incorporate some event into their storyline next time I play them.
Not enough sims, too many community lots, and a weak CPU was usually why community lots were empty. TS3 gadges the amount of sims to push onto lots by CPU power. When patches stopped, the game could no longer properly detect new hardware. It's supposed to default to ultra but sometimes it doesn't and you have to manually adjust info via game files.
This was an issue since basegame. Even at the rabbithole bistro there were no other sims beside my own. And sometimes they came on a lot and left after 5 minutes in game time, you barely had time to greet them. Anyway, I prefer TS4 because now there are 20 sims on a lot when I visit instead of 20 sims spread out over the entire neighbourhood that I never get to meet.
And since base game, CPU power was still being used to gadge how many sims to push onto lots. I never had any issues personally but TS3 is a complicated mess of spaghetti code that never aged gracefully.
I miss open world deeply when it comes to controlling a large household trying to keep everyone's schedule on track and skill building. Not so easy when the other half of the household is off screen.
It’s such a disappointment that the apartments will have loading screens. Why must this game cater to potato laptops that are barely able to support the game in the first place? Why can’t they at least give players an option to test if their PC can handle a more open experience?
I’m sure plenty of players have PCs that allow them to avoid loading screens and still maintain decent performance, so why can’t those players have an option that is more suited to their PCs? Catering to lower end systems only holds back TS4 and limits the player experience.
I agree with you, but Sims 4 was not built to scale up or down to one specs unlike in previous versions. They want everybody to get the same bells and whistles.
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I don't think the game is catering to "potato laptops" with the loading screens. I think this is a misconception. Even though TS4 works on lower-end computers which is good, the playing experience seems to center higher-end ones. For example, loading screens only appear for a few seconds on high-end gaming computers so they're not that big of a deal even with all packs and tons of mods/CC. However, for slower computers, I think it takes 30 seconds to a few minutes to travel between lots, which is probably annoying... It would be great if there weren't any loading screens and the game let us play with 50 Sims on a lot, etc. but many of the people concerned about this seem to be those with slow loading times. If it takes a long time to load lots, it's also likely that the computer might struggle with processing multiple units on a single lot if we were able to view them all at once. TS4 simulates a lot of different stuff in the background and it's not that easy of a game to run if there are 50+ Sims on a lot with a bunch of interactive objects.
Tons of toggles add complexity to the game and complicate listed system requirements, so there's probably reluctance to add a bunch of toggles in the option menu. Instead, they made the game easy to mod and more advanced users can use mods to increase household size or the number of Sims allowed on a lot.
I just hope that this pack isn't buggy.
I think even the presence of the loading screens, however short, are kind of immersion breaking. They’re super jarring when you just want to visit your neighbor for instance. But even aside from that, they limit gameplay. If I want a sim to say hi to their neighbors, I can only load one lot. I can’t have some sims socialize at home, and then others greet their neighbors. I essentially have to choose only one sim to follow and let the rest of the household meander offscreen.
What if I want my teen sims to hangout at their friend’s house, while also having their parents work on skills, and the children socialize with a different household? In Sims 3 and Sims 2 Apartment Life, I could focus both on having certain sims socialize in different houses/apartments, while also focusing on developing other sims at home.
And I don’t think optional toggles would up the system requirements. They just have to list the minimum requirements, and these optional toggles are optional and not necessary so the system requirements wouldn’t be any more intensive than they are now. Have a certain default, and then if players want, they can up the default settings to match their system. Meanwhile, other players who can’t handle it can just keep their systems at the default minimum requirements without any hassle.
You certainly couldn't load multiple apartments at the same time in TS2. If you wanted to see your neighbours you had to either visit them or meet them in the shared space. As for TS4, it's possible to call your neighbours and friends to come over and visit you on your lot or some community lot, and you can also hang out with them in shared neighbourhood space. You don't need to go visit them on their lot if you don't want to deal with loading screens. Also, you often see and meet your neighbours in the street outside your house if you only want to say hi to them and many times they come and visit on their own. As for checking on several sims at the same time on different lots, that just isn't fun or easily doable, that's why TS3 enthusiasts loved the rabbithole buildings, because they could just send their sims there and get them out of the active lot while pretending they are doing something. In TS4 you can get pretty much a similar experience to TS3 if you try to make full use of the neighbourhood space, especially if you choose to play in a neighbourhood that offers plenty of activities with food stands, playgrounds and festivals.
I think what I was imagining and hoping for was like TS2’s apartment system where units that weren’t your’s were blacked out and not loaded, and only loaded once you knocked on their door. That way you save resources by only rendering your own active unit, but also avoid loading screens when you want to visit neighbors.
And I’d argue it is fun to check in on multiple sims on multiple lots. That’s why a lot of players loved TS3 Ambitions, they could follow their sims at work, and then when that got boring they could focus on the rest of the household. I myself used to have my household everywhere, with teen sims hanging out at parks, parent sims cooking meals at home, etc. A lot of people actually hated the rabbit holes in TS3. It just makes for smoother gameplay to send a sim somewhere without loading screens.
We don't know what the loading screens will be like and we'll need to wait for the livestream to find out. I will argue that rabbitholes are not gameplay, it's just a system to park your unneeded sims that are getting in the way of playing and are completely useless when you tend to play single sims. Depending on neighbourhood you're playing in TS4, you can still send your sim out there out of the house to do something else, while you focus on other sims cooking on their home lot. There is nothing you can achieve on another's sims home lot that you can't do on your own lot and just being able to check in on them once in a while on a whim doesn't make-up for the fact that your neighbourhoods and community lots are overall devoid of sims and many of the said community lots are in fact rabbitholes. Yes, you will need to load a community lot in order to play in it in TS4, but then you get a fully playable lot full of sims instead of just a rabbithole and in my opinion that's a plus. You can even earn money in several ways in self-employed type careers, without leaving your lot and neighbourhood if you want active type careers, so you only load other lots because you want to not because you have to.
I agree that rabbit holes aren’t really gameplay, but I’m saying TS3’s open world was amazing because you could have sims on multiple active lots at the same time. Everything that is a rabbit hole in TS3 is still a rabbit hole in TS4, so it’s not like TS4 has improved on anything. Bars, parks, hangouts, festivals, nectaries, etc. are all active lots in TS3. I can have one sim buying stuff at the consignment store, another checking out the festival, and then one at a bar. You just can’t do that in TS4.
A lot of people like TS3 because they can load multiple active lots at once, something that’s impossible in TS4.
And even the argument against rabbit holes equally applies to TS4 as it does TS3. TS4 has just as many rabbit holes (most careers, elementary school, movie theaters, etc).
The only problem with TS3 active lots, was that they were empty. You went to the park, it was empty, you went to the bar, it was also empty, all the so called active lots were empty or almost empty with just a cashier or a bartender tending to the lot. And sometimes they were closed too. I said it before that this type of open neighbourhood is useless and not fun to me. If I want my sims to drink alone, they can do so at home. I take my sims to community lots to raise their fun and to socialize and meet and befriend other sims, and to busk for tips and sell their merchandise, how are they going to do that if there is no one else on the lots? I also get to see what my other sims are getting up to when I am not actively playing them and I may incorporate some event into their storyline next time I play them.
Not enough sims, too many community lots, and a weak CPU was usually why community lots were empty. TS3 gadges the amount of sims to push onto lots by CPU power. When patches stopped, the game could no longer properly detect new hardware. It's supposed to default to ultra but sometimes it doesn't and you have to manually adjust info via game files.
This was an issue since basegame. Even at the rabbithole bistro there were no other sims beside my own. And sometimes they came on a lot and left after 5 minutes in game time, you barely had time to greet them. Anyway, I prefer TS4 because now there are 20 sims on a lot when I visit instead of 20 sims spread out over the entire neighbourhood that I never get to meet.
And since base game, CPU power was still being used to gadge how many sims to push onto lots. I never had any issues personally but TS3 is a complicated mess of spaghetti code that never aged gracefully.
I miss open world deeply when it comes to controlling a large household trying to keep everyone's schedule on track and skill building. Not so easy when the other half of the household is off screen.
True and being Sims 3 was the first with true open worlds I knew it was not perfect and Maxis/EA did not fully tweak Sims 3 or even Sims 4. However, I still loved the mechanics of Sims 3 if only it was tweaked properly. I am glad EA/Maxis stepped up the new EP but the only reason they did this was in my belief with LBY coming out as they could have done this prior to LNY being announced.
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> @RapidRabidRabbit said: > Catering to lower end systems only holds back TS4 and limits the player experience.
Isn't this a smart decision from a business perspective, though? Only a limited amount of people would have a high-end computer. So I don't really have an opinion on loading screens one way or another before I get to play the pack, but it doesn't seem to me like it makes sense to make a game that only a small number of people would be able to run properly. Also, if you have a high-end pc, your game should load extremely quickly anyway.
> @RapidRabidRabbit said:
> Catering to lower end systems only holds back TS4 and limits the player experience.
Isn't this a smart decision from a business perspective, though? Only a limited amount of people would have a high-end computer. So I don't really have an opinion on loading screens one way or another before I get to play the pack, but it doesn't seem to me like it makes sense to make a game that only a small number of people would be able to run properly. Also, if you have a high-end pc, your game should load extremely quickly anyway.
I just feel like at a certain point, they should be able to compromise a bit. Maybe just make the game open neighborhood rather than open world, because how far does that excuse go? I'm sure, if they really wanted to, they could also make it so every room requires a loading screen, that way they could have an even further reach, but also making each room a different loading screen is an objectively bad idea.
A game can't run on every computer ever, and if catering to such low end machines restricts gameplay and means removing features, maybe they shouldn't cater to low end machines then.
My main issue is that loading screens, however fast, are still a chore to go through. They just break up the gameplay and make it impossible to control multiple sims in different locations.
I don't think the game is catering to "potato laptops" with the loading screens. I think this is a misconception. Even though TS4 works on lower-end computers which is good, the playing experience seems to center higher-end ones. For example, loading screens only appear for a few seconds on high-end gaming computers so they're not that big of a deal even with all packs and tons of mods/CC. However, for slower computers, I think it takes 30 seconds to a few minutes to travel between lots, which is probably annoying... It would be great if there weren't any loading screens and the game let us play with 50 Sims on a lot, etc. but many of the people concerned about this seem to be those with slow loading times. If it takes a long time to load lots, it's also likely that the computer might struggle with processing multiple units on a single lot if we were able to view them all at once. TS4 simulates a lot of different stuff in the background and it's not that easy of a game to run if there are 50+ Sims on a lot with a bunch of interactive objects.
Tons of toggles add complexity to the game and complicate listed system requirements, so there's probably reluctance to add a bunch of toggles in the option menu. Instead, they made the game easy to mod and more advanced users can use mods to increase household size or the number of Sims allowed on a lot.
I just hope that this pack isn't buggy.
I think even the presence of the loading screens, however short, are kind of immersion breaking. They’re super jarring when you just want to visit your neighbor for instance. But even aside from that, they limit gameplay. If I want a sim to say hi to their neighbors, I can only load one lot. I can’t have some sims socialize at home, and then others greet their neighbors. I essentially have to choose only one sim to follow and let the rest of the household meander offscreen.
What if I want my teen sims to hangout at their friend’s house, while also having their parents work on skills, and the children socialize with a different household? In Sims 3 and Sims 2 Apartment Life, I could focus both on having certain sims socialize in different houses/apartments, while also focusing on developing other sims at home.
And I don’t think optional toggles would up the system requirements. They just have to list the minimum requirements, and these optional toggles are optional and not necessary so the system requirements wouldn’t be any more intensive than they are now. Have a certain default, and then if players want, they can up the default settings to match their system. Meanwhile, other players who can’t handle it can just keep their systems at the default minimum requirements without any hassle.
You certainly couldn't load multiple apartments at the same time in TS2. If you wanted to see your neighbours you had to either visit them or meet them in the shared space. As for TS4, it's possible to call your neighbours and friends to come over and visit you on your lot or some community lot, and you can also hang out with them in shared neighbourhood space. You don't need to go visit them on their lot if you don't want to deal with loading screens. Also, you often see and meet your neighbours in the street outside your house if you only want to say hi to them and many times they come and visit on their own. As for checking on several sims at the same time on different lots, that just isn't fun or easily doable, that's why TS3 enthusiasts loved the rabbithole buildings, because they could just send their sims there and get them out of the active lot while pretending they are doing something. In TS4 you can get pretty much a similar experience to TS3 if you try to make full use of the neighbourhood space, especially if you choose to play in a neighbourhood that offers plenty of activities with food stands, playgrounds and festivals.
I think what I was imagining and hoping for was like TS2’s apartment system where units that weren’t your’s were blacked out and not loaded, and only loaded once you knocked on their door. That way you save resources by only rendering your own active unit, but also avoid loading screens when you want to visit neighbors.
And I’d argue it is fun to check in on multiple sims on multiple lots. That’s why a lot of players loved TS3 Ambitions, they could follow their sims at work, and then when that got boring they could focus on the rest of the household. I myself used to have my household everywhere, with teen sims hanging out at parks, parent sims cooking meals at home, etc. A lot of people actually hated the rabbit holes in TS3. It just makes for smoother gameplay to send a sim somewhere without loading screens.
We don't know what the loading screens will be like and we'll need to wait for the livestream to find out. I will argue that rabbitholes are not gameplay, it's just a system to park your unneeded sims that are getting in the way of playing and are completely useless when you tend to play single sims. Depending on neighbourhood you're playing in TS4, you can still send your sim out there out of the house to do something else, while you focus on other sims cooking on their home lot. There is nothing you can achieve on another's sims home lot that you can't do on your own lot and just being able to check in on them once in a while on a whim doesn't make-up for the fact that your neighbourhoods and community lots are overall devoid of sims and many of the said community lots are in fact rabbitholes. Yes, you will need to load a community lot in order to play in it in TS4, but then you get a fully playable lot full of sims instead of just a rabbithole and in my opinion that's a plus. You can even earn money in several ways in self-employed type careers, without leaving your lot and neighbourhood if you want active type careers, so you only load other lots because you want to not because you have to.
I agree that rabbit holes aren’t really gameplay, but I’m saying TS3’s open world was amazing because you could have sims on multiple active lots at the same time. Everything that is a rabbit hole in TS3 is still a rabbit hole in TS4, so it’s not like TS4 has improved on anything. Bars, parks, hangouts, festivals, nectaries, etc. are all active lots in TS3. I can have one sim buying stuff at the consignment store, another checking out the festival, and then one at a bar. You just can’t do that in TS4.
A lot of people like TS3 because they can load multiple active lots at once, something that’s impossible in TS4.
And even the argument against rabbit holes equally applies to TS4 as it does TS3. TS4 has just as many rabbit holes (most careers, elementary school, movie theaters, etc).
The only problem with TS3 active lots, was that they were empty. You went to the park, it was empty, you went to the bar, it was also empty, all the so called active lots were empty or almost empty with just a cashier or a bartender tending to the lot. And sometimes they were closed too. I said it before that this type of open neighbourhood is useless and not fun to me. If I want my sims to drink alone, they can do so at home. I take my sims to community lots to raise their fun and to socialize and meet and befriend other sims, and to busk for tips and sell their merchandise, how are they going to do that if there is no one else on the lots? I also get to see what my other sims are getting up to when I am not actively playing them and I may incorporate some event into their storyline next time I play them.
Was your PC powerful enough to handle it? Because whenever I load up TS3, my community lots are very active. I've counted an average of around 8-12 sims on a lot before. It's less than TS4's 20 sims per lot, but I think that's just because TS3 older and by design doesn't push more than that amount of sims to visit.
The game checks your CPU to see if it can handle a lot of sims, and sometimes doesn't recognize newer CPUs so you have to get it to manually register it. After doing that, my community lots are never empty, and always at least have 8ish other sims just hanging out there.
And also, TS4 can implement it in a way that makes sure lots aren't empty. TS3 already has a system that pushes townies to visit lots your sims are at, so presumably they can just do the same thing again, maybe just increase it so it pushes 20 sims to arrive, rather than 8-12.
I don't think the game is catering to "potato laptops" with the loading screens. I think this is a misconception. Even though TS4 works on lower-end computers which is good, the playing experience seems to center higher-end ones. For example, loading screens only appear for a few seconds on high-end gaming computers so they're not that big of a deal even with all packs and tons of mods/CC. However, for slower computers, I think it takes 30 seconds to a few minutes to travel between lots, which is probably annoying... It would be great if there weren't any loading screens and the game let us play with 50 Sims on a lot, etc. but many of the people concerned about this seem to be those with slow loading times. If it takes a long time to load lots, it's also likely that the computer might struggle with processing multiple units on a single lot if we were able to view them all at once. TS4 simulates a lot of different stuff in the background and it's not that easy of a game to run if there are 50+ Sims on a lot with a bunch of interactive objects.
Tons of toggles add complexity to the game and complicate listed system requirements, so there's probably reluctance to add a bunch of toggles in the option menu. Instead, they made the game easy to mod and more advanced users can use mods to increase household size or the number of Sims allowed on a lot.
I just hope that this pack isn't buggy.
I think even the presence of the loading screens, however short, are kind of immersion breaking. They’re super jarring when you just want to visit your neighbor for instance. But even aside from that, they limit gameplay. If I want a sim to say hi to their neighbors, I can only load one lot. I can’t have some sims socialize at home, and then others greet their neighbors. I essentially have to choose only one sim to follow and let the rest of the household meander offscreen.
What if I want my teen sims to hangout at their friend’s house, while also having their parents work on skills, and the children socialize with a different household? In Sims 3 and Sims 2 Apartment Life, I could focus both on having certain sims socialize in different houses/apartments, while also focusing on developing other sims at home.
And I don’t think optional toggles would up the system requirements. They just have to list the minimum requirements, and these optional toggles are optional and not necessary so the system requirements wouldn’t be any more intensive than they are now. Have a certain default, and then if players want, they can up the default settings to match their system. Meanwhile, other players who can’t handle it can just keep their systems at the default minimum requirements without any hassle.
You certainly couldn't load multiple apartments at the same time in TS2. If you wanted to see your neighbours you had to either visit them or meet them in the shared space. As for TS4, it's possible to call your neighbours and friends to come over and visit you on your lot or some community lot, and you can also hang out with them in shared neighbourhood space. You don't need to go visit them on their lot if you don't want to deal with loading screens. Also, you often see and meet your neighbours in the street outside your house if you only want to say hi to them and many times they come and visit on their own. As for checking on several sims at the same time on different lots, that just isn't fun or easily doable, that's why TS3 enthusiasts loved the rabbithole buildings, because they could just send their sims there and get them out of the active lot while pretending they are doing something. In TS4 you can get pretty much a similar experience to TS3 if you try to make full use of the neighbourhood space, especially if you choose to play in a neighbourhood that offers plenty of activities with food stands, playgrounds and festivals.
I think what I was imagining and hoping for was like TS2’s apartment system where units that weren’t your’s were blacked out and not loaded, and only loaded once you knocked on their door. That way you save resources by only rendering your own active unit, but also avoid loading screens when you want to visit neighbors.
And I’d argue it is fun to check in on multiple sims on multiple lots. That’s why a lot of players loved TS3 Ambitions, they could follow their sims at work, and then when that got boring they could focus on the rest of the household. I myself used to have my household everywhere, with teen sims hanging out at parks, parent sims cooking meals at home, etc. A lot of people actually hated the rabbit holes in TS3. It just makes for smoother gameplay to send a sim somewhere without loading screens.
We don't know what the loading screens will be like and we'll need to wait for the livestream to find out. I will argue that rabbitholes are not gameplay, it's just a system to park your unneeded sims that are getting in the way of playing and are completely useless when you tend to play single sims. Depending on neighbourhood you're playing in TS4, you can still send your sim out there out of the house to do something else, while you focus on other sims cooking on their home lot. There is nothing you can achieve on another's sims home lot that you can't do on your own lot and just being able to check in on them once in a while on a whim doesn't make-up for the fact that your neighbourhoods and community lots are overall devoid of sims and many of the said community lots are in fact rabbitholes. Yes, you will need to load a community lot in order to play in it in TS4, but then you get a fully playable lot full of sims instead of just a rabbithole and in my opinion that's a plus. You can even earn money in several ways in self-employed type careers, without leaving your lot and neighbourhood if you want active type careers, so you only load other lots because you want to not because you have to.
I agree that rabbit holes aren’t really gameplay, but I’m saying TS3’s open world was amazing because you could have sims on multiple active lots at the same time. Everything that is a rabbit hole in TS3 is still a rabbit hole in TS4, so it’s not like TS4 has improved on anything. Bars, parks, hangouts, festivals, nectaries, etc. are all active lots in TS3. I can have one sim buying stuff at the consignment store, another checking out the festival, and then one at a bar. You just can’t do that in TS4.
A lot of people like TS3 because they can load multiple active lots at once, something that’s impossible in TS4.
And even the argument against rabbit holes equally applies to TS4 as it does TS3. TS4 has just as many rabbit holes (most careers, elementary school, movie theaters, etc).
The only problem with TS3 active lots, was that they were empty. You went to the park, it was empty, you went to the bar, it was also empty, all the so called active lots were empty or almost empty with just a cashier or a bartender tending to the lot. And sometimes they were closed too. I said it before that this type of open neighbourhood is useless and not fun to me. If I want my sims to drink alone, they can do so at home. I take my sims to community lots to raise their fun and to socialize and meet and befriend other sims, and to busk for tips and sell their merchandise, how are they going to do that if there is no one else on the lots? I also get to see what my other sims are getting up to when I am not actively playing them and I may incorporate some event into their storyline next time I play them.
Was your PC powerful enough to handle it? Because whenever I load up TS3, my community lots are very active. I've counted an average of around 8-12 sims on a lot before. It's less than TS4's 20 sims per lot, but I think that's just because TS3 older and by design doesn't push more than that amount of sims to visit.
The game checks your CPU to see if it can handle a lot of sims, and sometimes doesn't recognize newer CPUs so you have to get it to manually register it. After doing that, my community lots are never empty, and always at least have 8ish other sims just hanging out there.
And also, TS4 can implement it in a way that makes sure lots aren't empty. TS3 already has a system that pushes townies to visit lots your sims are at, so presumably they can just do the same thing again, maybe just increase it so it pushes 20 sims to arrive, rather than 8-12.
It wasn't so much a question of CPU power but an issue of game design. Sims were simply not designed to stay on community lots. They were designed to go to work and then straight home and those who did show up did so based on their traits and lot type and if they happened to live the nearby area and were not at work. And sometimes they only visited briefly or only passing by. Or maybe it took them forever to arrive from the other side of the neighborhood. Anyway, there is enough footage online that shows that's the case for almost everyone playing that game.
I don't think the game is catering to "potato laptops" with the loading screens. I think this is a misconception. Even though TS4 works on lower-end computers which is good, the playing experience seems to center higher-end ones. For example, loading screens only appear for a few seconds on high-end gaming computers so they're not that big of a deal even with all packs and tons of mods/CC. However, for slower computers, I think it takes 30 seconds to a few minutes to travel between lots, which is probably annoying... It would be great if there weren't any loading screens and the game let us play with 50 Sims on a lot, etc. but many of the people concerned about this seem to be those with slow loading times. If it takes a long time to load lots, it's also likely that the computer might struggle with processing multiple units on a single lot if we were able to view them all at once. TS4 simulates a lot of different stuff in the background and it's not that easy of a game to run if there are 50+ Sims on a lot with a bunch of interactive objects.
Tons of toggles add complexity to the game and complicate listed system requirements, so there's probably reluctance to add a bunch of toggles in the option menu. Instead, they made the game easy to mod and more advanced users can use mods to increase household size or the number of Sims allowed on a lot.
I just hope that this pack isn't buggy.
I think even the presence of the loading screens, however short, are kind of immersion breaking. They’re super jarring when you just want to visit your neighbor for instance. But even aside from that, they limit gameplay. If I want a sim to say hi to their neighbors, I can only load one lot. I can’t have some sims socialize at home, and then others greet their neighbors. I essentially have to choose only one sim to follow and let the rest of the household meander offscreen.
What if I want my teen sims to hangout at their friend’s house, while also having their parents work on skills, and the children socialize with a different household? In Sims 3 and Sims 2 Apartment Life, I could focus both on having certain sims socialize in different houses/apartments, while also focusing on developing other sims at home.
And I don’t think optional toggles would up the system requirements. They just have to list the minimum requirements, and these optional toggles are optional and not necessary so the system requirements wouldn’t be any more intensive than they are now. Have a certain default, and then if players want, they can up the default settings to match their system. Meanwhile, other players who can’t handle it can just keep their systems at the default minimum requirements without any hassle.
You certainly couldn't load multiple apartments at the same time in TS2. If you wanted to see your neighbours you had to either visit them or meet them in the shared space. As for TS4, it's possible to call your neighbours and friends to come over and visit you on your lot or some community lot, and you can also hang out with them in shared neighbourhood space. You don't need to go visit them on their lot if you don't want to deal with loading screens. Also, you often see and meet your neighbours in the street outside your house if you only want to say hi to them and many times they come and visit on their own. As for checking on several sims at the same time on different lots, that just isn't fun or easily doable, that's why TS3 enthusiasts loved the rabbithole buildings, because they could just send their sims there and get them out of the active lot while pretending they are doing something. In TS4 you can get pretty much a similar experience to TS3 if you try to make full use of the neighbourhood space, especially if you choose to play in a neighbourhood that offers plenty of activities with food stands, playgrounds and festivals.
I think what I was imagining and hoping for was like TS2’s apartment system where units that weren’t your’s were blacked out and not loaded, and only loaded once you knocked on their door. That way you save resources by only rendering your own active unit, but also avoid loading screens when you want to visit neighbors.
And I’d argue it is fun to check in on multiple sims on multiple lots. That’s why a lot of players loved TS3 Ambitions, they could follow their sims at work, and then when that got boring they could focus on the rest of the household. I myself used to have my household everywhere, with teen sims hanging out at parks, parent sims cooking meals at home, etc. A lot of people actually hated the rabbit holes in TS3. It just makes for smoother gameplay to send a sim somewhere without loading screens.
We don't know what the loading screens will be like and we'll need to wait for the livestream to find out. I will argue that rabbitholes are not gameplay, it's just a system to park your unneeded sims that are getting in the way of playing and are completely useless when you tend to play single sims. Depending on neighbourhood you're playing in TS4, you can still send your sim out there out of the house to do something else, while you focus on other sims cooking on their home lot. There is nothing you can achieve on another's sims home lot that you can't do on your own lot and just being able to check in on them once in a while on a whim doesn't make-up for the fact that your neighbourhoods and community lots are overall devoid of sims and many of the said community lots are in fact rabbitholes. Yes, you will need to load a community lot in order to play in it in TS4, but then you get a fully playable lot full of sims instead of just a rabbithole and in my opinion that's a plus. You can even earn money in several ways in self-employed type careers, without leaving your lot and neighbourhood if you want active type careers, so you only load other lots because you want to not because you have to.
I agree that rabbit holes aren’t really gameplay, but I’m saying TS3’s open world was amazing because you could have sims on multiple active lots at the same time. Everything that is a rabbit hole in TS3 is still a rabbit hole in TS4, so it’s not like TS4 has improved on anything. Bars, parks, hangouts, festivals, nectaries, etc. are all active lots in TS3. I can have one sim buying stuff at the consignment store, another checking out the festival, and then one at a bar. You just can’t do that in TS4.
A lot of people like TS3 because they can load multiple active lots at once, something that’s impossible in TS4.
And even the argument against rabbit holes equally applies to TS4 as it does TS3. TS4 has just as many rabbit holes (most careers, elementary school, movie theaters, etc).
The only problem with TS3 active lots, was that they were empty. You went to the park, it was empty, you went to the bar, it was also empty, all the so called active lots were empty or almost empty with just a cashier or a bartender tending to the lot. And sometimes they were closed too. I said it before that this type of open neighbourhood is useless and not fun to me. If I want my sims to drink alone, they can do so at home. I take my sims to community lots to raise their fun and to socialize and meet and befriend other sims, and to busk for tips and sell their merchandise, how are they going to do that if there is no one else on the lots? I also get to see what my other sims are getting up to when I am not actively playing them and I may incorporate some event into their storyline next time I play them.
Was your PC powerful enough to handle it? Because whenever I load up TS3, my community lots are very active. I've counted an average of around 8-12 sims on a lot before. It's less than TS4's 20 sims per lot, but I think that's just because TS3 older and by design doesn't push more than that amount of sims to visit.
The game checks your CPU to see if it can handle a lot of sims, and sometimes doesn't recognize newer CPUs so you have to get it to manually register it. After doing that, my community lots are never empty, and always at least have 8ish other sims just hanging out there.
And also, TS4 can implement it in a way that makes sure lots aren't empty. TS3 already has a system that pushes townies to visit lots your sims are at, so presumably they can just do the same thing again, maybe just increase it so it pushes 20 sims to arrive, rather than 8-12.
It wasn't so much a question of CPU power but an issue of game design. Sims were simply not designed to stay on community lots. They were designed to go to work and then straight home and those who did show up did so based on their traits and lot type and if they happened to live the nearby area and were not at work. And sometimes they only visited briefly or only passing by. Or maybe it took them forever to arrive from the other side of the neighborhood. Anyway, there is enough footage online that shows that's the case for almost everyone playing that game.
It’s literally in the code though. Once your sim shows up to a lot, the game pushes townies to arrive. I’ve seen footage, and that’s how it happens. If your CPU is good enough, it pushes around 8-10 townies to show up. Looking through the Sims 3 subreddit, most people’s community lots are pretty active.
By game design, community lots won’t be empty, and for me it works. I’ve never had the issue of empty community lots.
I don't think the game is catering to "potato laptops" with the loading screens. I think this is a misconception. Even though TS4 works on lower-end computers which is good, the playing experience seems to center higher-end ones. For example, loading screens only appear for a few seconds on high-end gaming computers so they're not that big of a deal even with all packs and tons of mods/CC. However, for slower computers, I think it takes 30 seconds to a few minutes to travel between lots, which is probably annoying... It would be great if there weren't any loading screens and the game let us play with 50 Sims on a lot, etc. but many of the people concerned about this seem to be those with slow loading times. If it takes a long time to load lots, it's also likely that the computer might struggle with processing multiple units on a single lot if we were able to view them all at once. TS4 simulates a lot of different stuff in the background and it's not that easy of a game to run if there are 50+ Sims on a lot with a bunch of interactive objects.
Tons of toggles add complexity to the game and complicate listed system requirements, so there's probably reluctance to add a bunch of toggles in the option menu. Instead, they made the game easy to mod and more advanced users can use mods to increase household size or the number of Sims allowed on a lot.
I just hope that this pack isn't buggy.
I think even the presence of the loading screens, however short, are kind of immersion breaking. They’re super jarring when you just want to visit your neighbor for instance. But even aside from that, they limit gameplay. If I want a sim to say hi to their neighbors, I can only load one lot. I can’t have some sims socialize at home, and then others greet their neighbors. I essentially have to choose only one sim to follow and let the rest of the household meander offscreen.
What if I want my teen sims to hangout at their friend’s house, while also having their parents work on skills, and the children socialize with a different household? In Sims 3 and Sims 2 Apartment Life, I could focus both on having certain sims socialize in different houses/apartments, while also focusing on developing other sims at home.
And I don’t think optional toggles would up the system requirements. They just have to list the minimum requirements, and these optional toggles are optional and not necessary so the system requirements wouldn’t be any more intensive than they are now. Have a certain default, and then if players want, they can up the default settings to match their system. Meanwhile, other players who can’t handle it can just keep their systems at the default minimum requirements without any hassle.
You certainly couldn't load multiple apartments at the same time in TS2. If you wanted to see your neighbours you had to either visit them or meet them in the shared space. As for TS4, it's possible to call your neighbours and friends to come over and visit you on your lot or some community lot, and you can also hang out with them in shared neighbourhood space. You don't need to go visit them on their lot if you don't want to deal with loading screens. Also, you often see and meet your neighbours in the street outside your house if you only want to say hi to them and many times they come and visit on their own. As for checking on several sims at the same time on different lots, that just isn't fun or easily doable, that's why TS3 enthusiasts loved the rabbithole buildings, because they could just send their sims there and get them out of the active lot while pretending they are doing something. In TS4 you can get pretty much a similar experience to TS3 if you try to make full use of the neighbourhood space, especially if you choose to play in a neighbourhood that offers plenty of activities with food stands, playgrounds and festivals.
I think what I was imagining and hoping for was like TS2’s apartment system where units that weren’t your’s were blacked out and not loaded, and only loaded once you knocked on their door. That way you save resources by only rendering your own active unit, but also avoid loading screens when you want to visit neighbors.
And I’d argue it is fun to check in on multiple sims on multiple lots. That’s why a lot of players loved TS3 Ambitions, they could follow their sims at work, and then when that got boring they could focus on the rest of the household. I myself used to have my household everywhere, with teen sims hanging out at parks, parent sims cooking meals at home, etc. A lot of people actually hated the rabbit holes in TS3. It just makes for smoother gameplay to send a sim somewhere without loading screens.
We don't know what the loading screens will be like and we'll need to wait for the livestream to find out. I will argue that rabbitholes are not gameplay, it's just a system to park your unneeded sims that are getting in the way of playing and are completely useless when you tend to play single sims. Depending on neighbourhood you're playing in TS4, you can still send your sim out there out of the house to do something else, while you focus on other sims cooking on their home lot. There is nothing you can achieve on another's sims home lot that you can't do on your own lot and just being able to check in on them once in a while on a whim doesn't make-up for the fact that your neighbourhoods and community lots are overall devoid of sims and many of the said community lots are in fact rabbitholes. Yes, you will need to load a community lot in order to play in it in TS4, but then you get a fully playable lot full of sims instead of just a rabbithole and in my opinion that's a plus. You can even earn money in several ways in self-employed type careers, without leaving your lot and neighbourhood if you want active type careers, so you only load other lots because you want to not because you have to.
I agree that rabbit holes aren’t really gameplay, but I’m saying TS3’s open world was amazing because you could have sims on multiple active lots at the same time. Everything that is a rabbit hole in TS3 is still a rabbit hole in TS4, so it’s not like TS4 has improved on anything. Bars, parks, hangouts, festivals, nectaries, etc. are all active lots in TS3. I can have one sim buying stuff at the consignment store, another checking out the festival, and then one at a bar. You just can’t do that in TS4.
A lot of people like TS3 because they can load multiple active lots at once, something that’s impossible in TS4.
And even the argument against rabbit holes equally applies to TS4 as it does TS3. TS4 has just as many rabbit holes (most careers, elementary school, movie theaters, etc).
The only problem with TS3 active lots, was that they were empty. You went to the park, it was empty, you went to the bar, it was also empty, all the so called active lots were empty or almost empty with just a cashier or a bartender tending to the lot. And sometimes they were closed too. I said it before that this type of open neighbourhood is useless and not fun to me. If I want my sims to drink alone, they can do so at home. I take my sims to community lots to raise their fun and to socialize and meet and befriend other sims, and to busk for tips and sell their merchandise, how are they going to do that if there is no one else on the lots? I also get to see what my other sims are getting up to when I am not actively playing them and I may incorporate some event into their storyline next time I play them.
Was your PC powerful enough to handle it? Because whenever I load up TS3, my community lots are very active. I've counted an average of around 8-12 sims on a lot before. It's less than TS4's 20 sims per lot, but I think that's just because TS3 older and by design doesn't push more than that amount of sims to visit.
The game checks your CPU to see if it can handle a lot of sims, and sometimes doesn't recognize newer CPUs so you have to get it to manually register it. After doing that, my community lots are never empty, and always at least have 8ish other sims just hanging out there.
And also, TS4 can implement it in a way that makes sure lots aren't empty. TS3 already has a system that pushes townies to visit lots your sims are at, so presumably they can just do the same thing again, maybe just increase it so it pushes 20 sims to arrive, rather than 8-12.
It wasn't so much a question of CPU power but an issue of game design. Sims were simply not designed to stay on community lots. They were designed to go to work and then straight home and those who did show up did so based on their traits and lot type and if they happened to live the nearby area and were not at work. And sometimes they only visited briefly or only passing by. Or maybe it took them forever to arrive from the other side of the neighborhood. Anyway, there is enough footage online that shows that's the case for almost everyone playing that game.
It’s literally in the code though. Once your sim shows up to a lot, the game pushes townies to arrive. I’ve seen footage, and that’s how it happens. If your CPU is good enough, it pushes around 8-10 townies to show up. Looking through the Sims 3 subreddit, most people’s community lots are pretty active.
By game design, community lots won’t be empty, and for me it works. I’ve never had the issue of empty community lots.
Yes, it probably does IF it can find 8-10 sims to meet the requirements. I remember I once visited a bar in Bridgeport and there were about 5 or 6 sims stuck in the elevator. My sim managed to order a drink before the bartender closed shop for the night.
I don't think the game is catering to "potato laptops" with the loading screens. I think this is a misconception. Even though TS4 works on lower-end computers which is good, the playing experience seems to center higher-end ones. For example, loading screens only appear for a few seconds on high-end gaming computers so they're not that big of a deal even with all packs and tons of mods/CC. However, for slower computers, I think it takes 30 seconds to a few minutes to travel between lots, which is probably annoying... It would be great if there weren't any loading screens and the game let us play with 50 Sims on a lot, etc. but many of the people concerned about this seem to be those with slow loading times. If it takes a long time to load lots, it's also likely that the computer might struggle with processing multiple units on a single lot if we were able to view them all at once. TS4 simulates a lot of different stuff in the background and it's not that easy of a game to run if there are 50+ Sims on a lot with a bunch of interactive objects.
Tons of toggles add complexity to the game and complicate listed system requirements, so there's probably reluctance to add a bunch of toggles in the option menu. Instead, they made the game easy to mod and more advanced users can use mods to increase household size or the number of Sims allowed on a lot.
I just hope that this pack isn't buggy.
I think even the presence of the loading screens, however short, are kind of immersion breaking. They’re super jarring when you just want to visit your neighbor for instance. But even aside from that, they limit gameplay. If I want a sim to say hi to their neighbors, I can only load one lot. I can’t have some sims socialize at home, and then others greet their neighbors. I essentially have to choose only one sim to follow and let the rest of the household meander offscreen.
What if I want my teen sims to hangout at their friend’s house, while also having their parents work on skills, and the children socialize with a different household? In Sims 3 and Sims 2 Apartment Life, I could focus both on having certain sims socialize in different houses/apartments, while also focusing on developing other sims at home.
And I don’t think optional toggles would up the system requirements. They just have to list the minimum requirements, and these optional toggles are optional and not necessary so the system requirements wouldn’t be any more intensive than they are now. Have a certain default, and then if players want, they can up the default settings to match their system. Meanwhile, other players who can’t handle it can just keep their systems at the default minimum requirements without any hassle.
You certainly couldn't load multiple apartments at the same time in TS2. If you wanted to see your neighbours you had to either visit them or meet them in the shared space. As for TS4, it's possible to call your neighbours and friends to come over and visit you on your lot or some community lot, and you can also hang out with them in shared neighbourhood space. You don't need to go visit them on their lot if you don't want to deal with loading screens. Also, you often see and meet your neighbours in the street outside your house if you only want to say hi to them and many times they come and visit on their own. As for checking on several sims at the same time on different lots, that just isn't fun or easily doable, that's why TS3 enthusiasts loved the rabbithole buildings, because they could just send their sims there and get them out of the active lot while pretending they are doing something. In TS4 you can get pretty much a similar experience to TS3 if you try to make full use of the neighbourhood space, especially if you choose to play in a neighbourhood that offers plenty of activities with food stands, playgrounds and festivals.
I think what I was imagining and hoping for was like TS2’s apartment system where units that weren’t your’s were blacked out and not loaded, and only loaded once you knocked on their door. That way you save resources by only rendering your own active unit, but also avoid loading screens when you want to visit neighbors.
And I’d argue it is fun to check in on multiple sims on multiple lots. That’s why a lot of players loved TS3 Ambitions, they could follow their sims at work, and then when that got boring they could focus on the rest of the household. I myself used to have my household everywhere, with teen sims hanging out at parks, parent sims cooking meals at home, etc. A lot of people actually hated the rabbit holes in TS3. It just makes for smoother gameplay to send a sim somewhere without loading screens.
We don't know what the loading screens will be like and we'll need to wait for the livestream to find out. I will argue that rabbitholes are not gameplay, it's just a system to park your unneeded sims that are getting in the way of playing and are completely useless when you tend to play single sims. Depending on neighbourhood you're playing in TS4, you can still send your sim out there out of the house to do something else, while you focus on other sims cooking on their home lot. There is nothing you can achieve on another's sims home lot that you can't do on your own lot and just being able to check in on them once in a while on a whim doesn't make-up for the fact that your neighbourhoods and community lots are overall devoid of sims and many of the said community lots are in fact rabbitholes. Yes, you will need to load a community lot in order to play in it in TS4, but then you get a fully playable lot full of sims instead of just a rabbithole and in my opinion that's a plus. You can even earn money in several ways in self-employed type careers, without leaving your lot and neighbourhood if you want active type careers, so you only load other lots because you want to not because you have to.
I agree that rabbit holes aren’t really gameplay, but I’m saying TS3’s open world was amazing because you could have sims on multiple active lots at the same time. Everything that is a rabbit hole in TS3 is still a rabbit hole in TS4, so it’s not like TS4 has improved on anything. Bars, parks, hangouts, festivals, nectaries, etc. are all active lots in TS3. I can have one sim buying stuff at the consignment store, another checking out the festival, and then one at a bar. You just can’t do that in TS4.
A lot of people like TS3 because they can load multiple active lots at once, something that’s impossible in TS4.
And even the argument against rabbit holes equally applies to TS4 as it does TS3. TS4 has just as many rabbit holes (most careers, elementary school, movie theaters, etc).
The only problem with TS3 active lots, was that they were empty. You went to the park, it was empty, you went to the bar, it was also empty, all the so called active lots were empty or almost empty with just a cashier or a bartender tending to the lot. And sometimes they were closed too. I said it before that this type of open neighbourhood is useless and not fun to me. If I want my sims to drink alone, they can do so at home. I take my sims to community lots to raise their fun and to socialize and meet and befriend other sims, and to busk for tips and sell their merchandise, how are they going to do that if there is no one else on the lots? I also get to see what my other sims are getting up to when I am not actively playing them and I may incorporate some event into their storyline next time I play them.
Was your PC powerful enough to handle it? Because whenever I load up TS3, my community lots are very active. I've counted an average of around 8-12 sims on a lot before. It's less than TS4's 20 sims per lot, but I think that's just because TS3 older and by design doesn't push more than that amount of sims to visit.
The game checks your CPU to see if it can handle a lot of sims, and sometimes doesn't recognize newer CPUs so you have to get it to manually register it. After doing that, my community lots are never empty, and always at least have 8ish other sims just hanging out there.
And also, TS4 can implement it in a way that makes sure lots aren't empty. TS3 already has a system that pushes townies to visit lots your sims are at, so presumably they can just do the same thing again, maybe just increase it so it pushes 20 sims to arrive, rather than 8-12.
It wasn't so much a question of CPU power but an issue of game design. Sims were simply not designed to stay on community lots. They were designed to go to work and then straight home and those who did show up did so based on their traits and lot type and if they happened to live the nearby area and were not at work. And sometimes they only visited briefly or only passing by. Or maybe it took them forever to arrive from the other side of the neighborhood. Anyway, there is enough footage online that shows that's the case for almost everyone playing that game.
It’s literally in the code though. Once your sim shows up to a lot, the game pushes townies to arrive. I’ve seen footage, and that’s how it happens. If your CPU is good enough, it pushes around 8-10 townies to show up. Looking through the Sims 3 subreddit, most people’s community lots are pretty active.
By game design, community lots won’t be empty, and for me it works. I’ve never had the issue of empty community lots.
Yes, it probably does IF it can find 8-10 sims to meet the requirements. I remember I once visited a bar in Bridgeport and there were about 5 or 6 sims stuck in the elevator. My sim managed to order a drink before the bartender closed shop for the night.
Isn't that an issue with the way elevators work, not an issue with the way open world works? If elevators worked in TS4 in the same way they did in TS3, I'm sure we'd also get tons of sims stuck in elevators in San Myshuno bars. That doesn't seem to be an issue related to open world.
I briefly fired up my game, and took some screenshots of other peoples' videos/gameplay to show that community lots seem to have a healthy population in TS3.
I circled the townies in red to help people find them A townie's Halloween party A gym from Reddit A bar from LGR's Late Night review
My experience with Sims 3 lots was pretty bad, and I have a decent system, more than capable processor for the game. I remember I had one fairy, a bartender and some other guy in a nightclub the whole night. This was in a new game, only about 16 hours in. And most of the other community lots were rabbit holes because I had trouble finding any in the bin that weren't, so it's not like the game was weighed down. This was with owning about 4 or 5 EPs. I don't build, so all the lots were game originals. That was just my experience, which I'll admit is limited, because I just can't play Sims 3 for very long, I don't like it. Every once in a while I try it out again to try to get into it, but it just doesn't work for my play style.
But going back to the subject of open neighborhoods, I know that a lot of people want this, but my main concern is how rotational play would work with it. Sims 2 and 4 allow for a lot of fluid rotational play, where you can easily jump in and out of households and play different Sims. Some people really don't like the game taking control of their households and making changes to them by having them still active and developing skills, progressing in careers, changing relationships, etc. Sims 4 does this to some extent, so it still requires some wrangling but isn't too unmanageable, though Sims 3 was really bad at it, considering it wasn't originally programmed for rotational play to begin with. If there was a way to design an open neighborhood to also allow for basic simulation of played households that stay on course for how the player created and played them, then that could be fun. But if we had to go back to sacrificing rotational control, I'd rather have loading screens.
I think that though, ideally, if a game could load without a screen, a la Sims 2 apartments, and just have sections blacked out until your Sim approached the area or the player switched over, that would be awesome. I'd find it hard to believe there isn't some way to do this smoothly with modern tech. The base game would have to be built to support it, though.
it does tbh. I have a decent gaming computer than hasnt been upgraded in almost 2-3 years and it runs quite well on mine and community lots usually get 9-12 sims per lot.
To select multiple rooms for one unit, I will instinctually press SHIFT while clicking the rooms one by one. Similar to selecting several cells in a spreadsheet. No idea if it will work, but it would make sense, + it would make it easy to group rooms on say two stories. I wonder if rooms that are not at all connected can be grouped, though, say a flat + a stable outside in a separate building. Soon we'll know
To select multiple rooms for one unit, I will instinctually press SHIFT while clicking the rooms one by one. Similar to selecting several cells in a spreadsheet. No idea if it will work, but it would make sense, + it would make it easy to group rooms on say two stories. I wonder if rooms that are not at all connected can be grouped, though, say a flat + a stable outside in a separate building. Soon we'll know
Good points. I hope we can select multiple rooms and assign the unit to all of them at once, otherwise some builds will be tedious to set units. Having rooms that don't physically touch be in the same unit would be interesting for gardening sheds or greenhouses on bigger lots. I hope we can do that.
This just occurred to me, but I am concerned that hopscotch is going to be tied to a larger, premade multi-tile object that has to be placed, and that they will make it some ridiculous price. If it's 200, or even 50 simoleans, that would be pretty outrageous.
In real life, part of what makes hopscotch such a familiar childhood game is that it's so financially accessible... kids in different countries, and across all walks of life, play hopscotch because all it requires is a $1 pack of chalk to draw the lines. I would prefer to see it either absolutely free, as a menu item selected by clicking on the sim ("draw hopscotch square") or on a point in the world, OR, at most, be tied to a chalk box object roughly the size and cost of the bottle of bubbles, which could be carried in the inventory.
This just occurred to me, but I am concerned that hopscotch is going to be tied to a larger, premade multi-tile object that has to be placed, and that they will make it some ridiculous price. If it's 200, or even 50 simoleans, that would be pretty outrageous.
In real life, part of what makes hopscotch such a familiar childhood game is that it's so financially accessible... kids in different countries, and across all walks of life, play hopscotch because all it requires is a $1 pack of chalk to draw the lines. I would prefer to see it either absolutely free, as a menu item selected by clicking on the sim ("draw hopscotch square") or on a point in the world, OR, at most, be tied to a chalk box object roughly the size and cost of the bottle of bubbles, which could be carried in the inventory.
Even though I like the fact that we'll get rentals, etc; I still think the whole pack looks like it should be part of the City Living Expansion, they're just launching things they should have done in the past...also I'd really appreciate if we could have more than one lot type on the same place like a rental apartment on top of a dinner, or a spa/coffee shop, etc.
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ― Oscar Wilde
This just occurred to me, but I am concerned that hopscotch is going to be tied to a larger, premade multi-tile object that has to be placed, and that they will make it some ridiculous price. If it's 200, or even 50 simoleans, that would be pretty outrageous.
In real life, part of what makes hopscotch such a familiar childhood game is that it's so financially accessible... kids in different countries, and across all walks of life, play hopscotch because all it requires is a $1 pack of chalk to draw the lines. I would prefer to see it either absolutely free, as a menu item selected by clicking on the sim ("draw hopscotch square") or on a point in the world, OR, at most, be tied to a chalk box object roughly the size and cost of the bottle of bubbles, which could be carried in the inventory.
Perment hot scroptch ,would cost something.
That's kind of my point: it shouldn't be permanent. Or require much money. The beauty of hopscotch is that kids all over the world, even poor kids, can play it if they can buy a cheap piece of chalk. I mean, sure, you can buy a $120 hopscotch mat from Pottery barn... but you don't have to... and it will be a little sad if our sim kids have to.
also I'd really appreciate if we could have more than one lot type on the same place like a rental apartment on top of a dinner, or a spa/coffee shop, etc.
I have been hoping for this, i know they said it won’t be with this pack but i do hope maybe another pack can integrate this system with cross pack compatibility one day, like maybe a Mall pack.
But i do wonder, i use the LMS Auto Employee mod to auto hire vendors on lots that they don’t typically spawn on. I hope that mod can be updated and work with apartments in some aspect. i made a Parisian cafe with the 2nd floor as apartments, so i hope if i can set the cafe as a shared space, then the mod can still work and spawn a barista there.
This just occurred to me, but I am concerned that hopscotch is going to be tied to a larger, premade multi-tile object that has to be placed, and that they will make it some ridiculous price. If it's 200, or even 50 simoleans, that would be pretty outrageous.
In real life, part of what makes hopscotch such a familiar childhood game is that it's so financially accessible... kids in different countries, and across all walks of life, play hopscotch because all it requires is a $1 pack of chalk to draw the lines. I would prefer to see it either absolutely free, as a menu item selected by clicking on the sim ("draw hopscotch square") or on a point in the world, OR, at most, be tied to a chalk box object roughly the size and cost of the bottle of bubbles, which could be carried in the inventory.
Perment hot scroptch ,would cost something.
That's kind of my point: it shouldn't be permanent. Or require much money. The beauty of hopscotch is that kids all over the world, even poor kids, can play it if they can buy a cheap piece of chalk. I mean, sure, you can buy a $120 hopscotch mat from Pottery barn... but you don't have to... and it will be a little sad if our sim kids have to.
This is is a game,our sims kids are not real.In reality hopscotch does cost money.The ones with chalk no but ones you put down yes.
Comments
Not enough sims, too many community lots, and a weak CPU was usually why community lots were empty. TS3 gadges the amount of sims to push onto lots by CPU power. When patches stopped, the game could no longer properly detect new hardware. It's supposed to default to ultra but sometimes it doesn't and you have to manually adjust info via game files.
S3 simblr: http://simplysimming.tumblr.com/
S4 simblr: http://simlogic.tumblr.com/
This was an issue since basegame. Even at the rabbithole bistro there were no other sims beside my own. And sometimes they came on a lot and left after 5 minutes in game time, you barely had time to greet them. Anyway, I prefer TS4 because now there are 20 sims on a lot when I visit instead of 20 sims spread out over the entire neighbourhood that I never get to meet.
And since base game, CPU power was still being used to gadge how many sims to push onto lots. I never had any issues personally but TS3 is a complicated mess of spaghetti code that never aged gracefully.
I miss open world deeply when it comes to controlling a large household trying to keep everyone's schedule on track and skill building. Not so easy when the other half of the household is off screen.
S3 simblr: http://simplysimming.tumblr.com/
S4 simblr: http://simlogic.tumblr.com/
I agree with you, but Sims 4 was not built to scale up or down to one specs unlike in previous versions. They want everybody to get the same bells and whistles.
True and being Sims 3 was the first with true open worlds I knew it was not perfect and Maxis/EA did not fully tweak Sims 3 or even Sims 4. However, I still loved the mechanics of Sims 3 if only it was tweaked properly. I am glad EA/Maxis stepped up the new EP but the only reason they did this was in my belief with LBY coming out as they could have done this prior to LNY being announced.
> Catering to lower end systems only holds back TS4 and limits the player experience.
Isn't this a smart decision from a business perspective, though? Only a limited amount of people would have a high-end computer. So I don't really have an opinion on loading screens one way or another before I get to play the pack, but it doesn't seem to me like it makes sense to make a game that only a small number of people would be able to run properly. Also, if you have a high-end pc, your game should load extremely quickly anyway.
I just feel like at a certain point, they should be able to compromise a bit. Maybe just make the game open neighborhood rather than open world, because how far does that excuse go? I'm sure, if they really wanted to, they could also make it so every room requires a loading screen, that way they could have an even further reach, but also making each room a different loading screen is an objectively bad idea.
A game can't run on every computer ever, and if catering to such low end machines restricts gameplay and means removing features, maybe they shouldn't cater to low end machines then.
My main issue is that loading screens, however fast, are still a chore to go through. They just break up the gameplay and make it impossible to control multiple sims in different locations.
Was your PC powerful enough to handle it? Because whenever I load up TS3, my community lots are very active. I've counted an average of around 8-12 sims on a lot before. It's less than TS4's 20 sims per lot, but I think that's just because TS3 older and by design doesn't push more than that amount of sims to visit.
The game checks your CPU to see if it can handle a lot of sims, and sometimes doesn't recognize newer CPUs so you have to get it to manually register it. After doing that, my community lots are never empty, and always at least have 8ish other sims just hanging out there.
And also, TS4 can implement it in a way that makes sure lots aren't empty. TS3 already has a system that pushes townies to visit lots your sims are at, so presumably they can just do the same thing again, maybe just increase it so it pushes 20 sims to arrive, rather than 8-12.
It wasn't so much a question of CPU power but an issue of game design. Sims were simply not designed to stay on community lots. They were designed to go to work and then straight home and those who did show up did so based on their traits and lot type and if they happened to live the nearby area and were not at work. And sometimes they only visited briefly or only passing by. Or maybe it took them forever to arrive from the other side of the neighborhood. Anyway, there is enough footage online that shows that's the case for almost everyone playing that game.
It’s literally in the code though. Once your sim shows up to a lot, the game pushes townies to arrive. I’ve seen footage, and that’s how it happens. If your CPU is good enough, it pushes around 8-10 townies to show up. Looking through the Sims 3 subreddit, most people’s community lots are pretty active.
By game design, community lots won’t be empty, and for me it works. I’ve never had the issue of empty community lots.
Yes, it probably does IF it can find 8-10 sims to meet the requirements. I remember I once visited a bar in Bridgeport and there were about 5 or 6 sims stuck in the elevator. My sim managed to order a drink before the bartender closed shop for the night.
Isn't that an issue with the way elevators work, not an issue with the way open world works? If elevators worked in TS4 in the same way they did in TS3, I'm sure we'd also get tons of sims stuck in elevators in San Myshuno bars. That doesn't seem to be an issue related to open world.
I briefly fired up my game, and took some screenshots of other peoples' videos/gameplay to show that community lots seem to have a healthy population in TS3.
But going back to the subject of open neighborhoods, I know that a lot of people want this, but my main concern is how rotational play would work with it. Sims 2 and 4 allow for a lot of fluid rotational play, where you can easily jump in and out of households and play different Sims. Some people really don't like the game taking control of their households and making changes to them by having them still active and developing skills, progressing in careers, changing relationships, etc. Sims 4 does this to some extent, so it still requires some wrangling but isn't too unmanageable, though Sims 3 was really bad at it, considering it wasn't originally programmed for rotational play to begin with. If there was a way to design an open neighborhood to also allow for basic simulation of played households that stay on course for how the player created and played them, then that could be fun. But if we had to go back to sacrificing rotational control, I'd rather have loading screens.
I think that though, ideally, if a game could load without a screen, a la Sims 2 apartments, and just have sections blacked out until your Sim approached the area or the player switched over, that would be awesome. I'd find it hard to believe there isn't some way to do this smoothly with modern tech. The base game would have to be built to support it, though.
Good points. I hope we can select multiple rooms and assign the unit to all of them at once, otherwise some builds will be tedious to set units. Having rooms that don't physically touch be in the same unit would be interesting for gardening sheds or greenhouses on bigger lots. I hope we can do that.
In real life, part of what makes hopscotch such a familiar childhood game is that it's so financially accessible... kids in different countries, and across all walks of life, play hopscotch because all it requires is a $1 pack of chalk to draw the lines. I would prefer to see it either absolutely free, as a menu item selected by clicking on the sim ("draw hopscotch square") or on a point in the world, OR, at most, be tied to a chalk box object roughly the size and cost of the bottle of bubbles, which could be carried in the inventory.
Perment hot scroptch ,would cost something.
That's kind of my point: it shouldn't be permanent. Or require much money. The beauty of hopscotch is that kids all over the world, even poor kids, can play it if they can buy a cheap piece of chalk. I mean, sure, you can buy a $120 hopscotch mat from Pottery barn... but you don't have to... and it will be a little sad if our sim kids have to.
I have been hoping for this, i know they said it won’t be with this pack but i do hope maybe another pack can integrate this system with cross pack compatibility one day, like maybe a Mall pack.
But i do wonder, i use the LMS Auto Employee mod to auto hire vendors on lots that they don’t typically spawn on. I hope that mod can be updated and work with apartments in some aspect. i made a Parisian cafe with the 2nd floor as apartments, so i hope if i can set the cafe as a shared space, then the mod can still work and spawn a barista there.
This is is a game,our sims kids are not real.In reality hopscotch does cost money.The ones with chalk no but ones you put down yes.