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The problem with sims 4 worlds in packs and the solutions.
Horrorgirl6
Posts: 3,306 Member
I feel like a lot of fans including are disappointed with the world coming to growing together.I feel like the issue is we are stuck with the worlds maxis gave us and because of performance they have to be small.We are currently stuck with getting worlds in game packs or expansion pack.
Maybe we need world packs.Yes I know some simmers dread more pack types and I know sims 3 was expensive.Still I think possibilities.We can get more worlds and even more diverse worlds as well.
I think we should have a create a world tool or at least maybe a world copier that can copy the world and we can choose if it's empty or poulated?
Maybe we need world packs.Yes I know some simmers dread more pack types and I know sims 3 was expensive.Still I think possibilities.We can get more worlds and even more diverse worlds as well.
I think we should have a create a world tool or at least maybe a world copier that can copy the world and we can choose if it's empty or poulated?
Post edited by EA_Solaire on
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I would love it tho if we could empty all the lots in a world at once or simply choose to start new games with empty worlds...it is sooo tedious to place empty lots on every lot in every world one at a time.
I think it has to do with them just wanting to showcase their worlds and not allow simmers to "mess it up". They're very proud of their worlds based upon a statement that was once made by SimGuruEugi when asked why players couldn't make their own apartment buildings.
https://simsvip.com/2016/09/21/sims-4-city-living-simgurueugi-explains-apartment-limitations/
Or the other reason is ..... players beg for new worlds! They will literally buy anything just to get the world because they need more lots. Well if they gave us large worlds with 20 lots each, that would mean players would have more areas to build and might be less apt to immediately purchase a pack just for the world.
It's greed! I don't believe the performance issue excuse. This is probably one of the lowest-poly/textures games out there besides Minecraft and Roblox!
How about actually making simmers take some responsibility for their own PC/Laptop. If you are on a low-end machine with bare minimun memory and onboard graphics and you flood your worlds with a massive amount of overly cluttered lots and you start to experience lag and your personal performance takes a hit, that's on them! They know the limitations of their PC.
TS4 is not the players game, it's the dev's game. You either accept the limitations and play the way they think you should or you go back to older versions that allowed more player creativity.
I'm just hoping and praying that Paralives gives us many more lots in the world and the freedom to change it how we the players want.
The Sims 4 hasn't introduced a new musical instrument since 2017
🐲🐲🐲🐲
Probably because the game had virtually nil DLC at that time. Maybe they're trying to prevent (more aptly, mitigate) a Sims 3 situation where the game will have to encourage you to disable packs for the best performance?
not only does it eat whole loads of performance for people who only want the gameplay of those pack to have all these worlds they barely use cause they're meh about the particular world theme
its also not satisfying the people who want these big worlds of whatever that apparently cannot be a thing because pack has to have other stuff
like geez how about we just do gamepacks that are all gameplay and world packs that are all world and stuff packs that are all stuff
and simply don't ep at all
also if world pack was like gp in the 20e tier it theoretically wouldn't cost player any extra to be able to choose which content they prefer or if they want both
cause world pack + game pack would still = ep price
we just would likely have way more gameplay because there wouldn't be the excuse of "we added pretty world so that makes this ep instead of gp"
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Sims 4 to manny simmers is just as buggy as sims 3 . I will say this though the team is fixing bugs and trying to improve gameplay .
My problem in general is the fact that EA decides how I have to play the game.
1) Lots and world objects can't be edited. In TS3, you could add/remove lots and world decor, which meant you could customize the world. In TS4, there are lots I don't use because there's world decor that I can't alter. In addition, there are plenty of lots that aren't a great size or bizarrely don't meet the road or fill a space as completely as they could.
Examples include houses in Strangerville/Glimmerbrook with stone planters out front that I can't remove, or the house in downtown Copperdale that is half the size of the neighboring shell house yet has loads of empty room behind it that is unusable, or that house in Tartosa on the top of the hill with a strip of empty un-editable land around it.
2) Neighborhoods are getting bigger and bigger, but the worlds feel empty and fake. Compare the feeling of the neighborhoods in Willow Creek, where all five lots are together and you can create neighbors, with the feeling of later neighborhoods like Evergreen or Copperdale where your sim is surrounded by empty fake houses. Also, bigger neighborhoods feel empty and lifeless when there are still only 20 active sims loaded at a time. Copperdale feels like a ghost town in my game.
3) There aren't enough lots. Since we can't add our own, all players are being capped by the needs of players who have the least powerful gaming set-ups. I'm not asking the team to cut off those players, but if they gave us the tools to edit worlds ourselves the control would be in our hands. San Sequoia only has 12 lots - perfect, perhaps, for a player whose PC can't handle any more than that. But mine can, so give me the tools necessary to add another 10 lots in my game.
I'm not sure if I would buy world packs, because I have a problem with the team's apparent design goals for the worlds they produce. World tools that let you edit the world, so we can change and customize things the way we want, would be the best solution in my opinion.
I like the idea of deleting worlds but perhaps it’s not possible due to Sims being able to visit everywhere. I don’t use Oasis Springs as I prefer StrangerVille and would like to remove it!
In the Sims 3 you could hide lots you didn’t like so perhaps an option to hide worlds might be easier? 🤔.
Prompts before delete/hide is good!
Another tick in options to say which worlds Sims can visit might help, although for me it would be certain Sims I would want to stop rather than all. It’s odd seeing Vlad and the Vatore vampires as walkbys in StrangerVille during the day. If I want a Sim to live in Henford, I would like that to stop them walking through larger towns and San MyShuno etc.
It’s frustrating Sims go anywhere despite a story you’re doing that should mean they don’t automatically go there.
I would love to make my own Japanese theme world. 😊
I think an empty world is possible as a ‘kit’. However there would have to be options to allow decoration placement in the world otherwise it’s not really creating your own. It would be just getting extra lots.
Totally agree. The map looks nice, the scenery also, but there is only 10 functional lots and some of them have weird placement. For example one lot is not connected to the path, another one is rotated related to the fake houses next to it, third one is placed on the wooden platform which can not be used...
I'm also fine with a 12 lot world. I rarely use more than 1 community lot per hood, and to me it's more important that there is some difference between hoods than many lots. I like to make up a back story for each world, and diverse hoods makes it much more interesting.
But - I do agree we could make world-packs. The game is now getting quite old, in he meaning of tons of content added from packs. I really don't benefit as much from a new sofa or bed, or 5 new paintings, not as much as before. My catalogues are packed, and it takes forever looking up something specific. This is of course not made easier by adding 5 trillion custom content... Anyway, new *empty* worlds are welcome - meaning lots are empty but the world can have various dress settings. I understand it might sell more when EA combines a new feature that 25% of the simmers want, and a new world that 25% wants, especially if that makes 50% likely buyers. My game is now so full and lagging gets more of a problem, so I will no longer buy a pack unless I want both the features and the world. In the past, I'd applaud it if one of the two ticked my desires.
Perhaps they could make it a bigger world pack with a way to select from several settings for the same lot layout. It was possible for ECO-Lifestyle, so why not making it a world decor feature? I also think they could offer a huge world - say with 6 hoods and a total of 40 lots - just to please all simmers who can handle it. There could even be a version with fewer lots for the rest of us, EA could get two worlds from the work with one - all they would need to adjust was replacing some of those lots with nature or scales for the limited version.
Their system requirements are very low, so I agree with what others are saying that it feels unnecessary to design a pack around those requirements because a computer with those specs are most likely going to run into problems after a short while as their save file grows larger. But that's probably not good business for them because they want to appeal to a large player base.
The game itself seems to load and remove neighborhoods when you travel so I don't think that matters too much, what probably matters is how much the game needs to index and keep track of, save files seem to grow very large over time and a lot can contain thousands of build/buy items so a lot can probably take up a lot of resources.
When it comes to their budget I think they are also pretty limited, they are already making quite a lot of content every year and they probably have to spend a lot of resources building the world with all the neighborhoods and the lots, they could maybe make world packs as the OP suggested but it will probably take time, time that they might not have.
Those are my guesses anyway. If you ask me I think they should look into increasing their pool of resources by increasing their budget and raising their minimum system requirements a bit and see if that could allow them to make larger worlds. But I'm not sure if that's something that they want to do.
I would also really like to have less set dressing between the lots. I realise we can't escape the set dressing any more but with fake builds in between lots the devs decide to look and feel of a world and we can take it or leave it. When several lots are close to each other, editing other lots is editing the neighbouring lots. It gives at least a tad bit of freedom. Where is the 'you rule' slogan from when the game was launched. Even better would be to allow us to edit the neighbourhood. Sims 2 would allow us to do so back in 2004.
Another result of so much space between lots is that the area between lots is so empty. Why make such vast spaces if you don't allow enough sims to spawn to make them feel alive.
I am not sure if world packs are the answer because I am not convinced that this will lead to big worlds like willow creek and windenburg or even medium sized worlds like brindleton bay. The claim that modern day pc's can't handle more than 12 lots in a world will probably still stand. I think it is not just about performance but also about development resources. More lots means more builds have to be created. Not really because simmers like empty lots but the team will probably feel they have to create builds and families for those lots, which means resources for those lots. If we can ever get a world pack I hope it will be larger. Then people can choose if they want to add a large world to the game but don't miss out on gameplay if their system can't handle a medium sized or large world.
Worlds and neighbourhoods are loaded one at a time, so if someone's computer can handle Windenburg then they could definitely handle more similarly large worlds. Maybe there could be issues if all the lots in such worlds are filled with sims, but it's still mostly something that can be addressed by the player, by limiting their sim population. I think the issue with big worlds is that it takes a lot more time to build them and code and implicitly also more money to develop them, so maybe they cut on world development in favour of more gameplay. On the other hand, they add so many fake buildings that it makes me think that somewhere in the future they plan to open them up somehow. It makes no sense that we have fake buildings where regular lots could be placed. Like the pier section in Copperdale, all places suitable to placing a business lot are shell buildings, and if you want to put a business there you need to build it in the woods. They did this same thing in Tartosa, and it appears it will be the same situation in the world coming with next EP.
Also I wouldn't be in favor of buying world packs. They've already given us a free world in the past, and it was a decently sized one too (it looking like an extension of WC not part of the discussion). TS4 packs already feel so cut down and split up. I wouldn't be in favor of cutting them down further, but I do understand the balancing of the budget for an EP and that more of that is probably going into the world than into gameplay (there's been an aversion to adding new animations for years now and IMO that's one of the biggest problems for me gameplay-wise because it keeps gameplay from expanding if you have to figure out how to make new content around pre-existing animations).
It's safe to say TS4 has a budget problem. I don't blame the devs for this. But there are a lot of decisions made that just make me scratch my head. I also do not necessarily buy the "catering to low end pc players" line anymore either. Because like others have said, we've had larger worlds already, and we know how the game loads lots. HOWEVER, if I am to believe them about the low spec users, low spec players (should) understand the limitations of their systems. Low setting options exist for a reason. Why cater to the lowest specs? I understand wanting to have a broad audience, but it's 2023 already. What computers do they use as a "guideline" for their game design?
If they want to cater more towards low spec players, why not add more rabbit hole lots to all the empty buildings that are just set dressing? I would be fine with that. I would LOVE more window shops like TS3 had. Little cafes and diners that your sim can grab a snack to-go from (or maybe even work at? Like in TS3?). All those empty shells by the pier fair in Copperdale I thought were going to be little souvenir shops or bait shops stuff like that. But nope, empty. And an empty apartment building too that I was REALLY hoping was going to be functional like the ones in Evergreen Harbor, because that's a GREAT WAY to make a lot of use out of a tiny space! Why don't we have more little apartment complexes? If world size is such an issue and people need room for more families, why not have more apartments? They don't need to be skyscrapers like in San Myshuno. Just little complexes would be enough with 2 or 3 living spaces.
From the tweets I've seen, it really feels like they have a very strong "vision" when it comes to their worlds. It's good to have a strong vision and clear focus of your desired goals, but it's really starting to cement for me that the desires of the devs and the desires of the players are not in the same place. Unless the devs are constrained by limitations they can't share with us, I don't understand the aversion to at LEAST adding more lots in all of the empty spaces around the worlds now. It's not like being connected to a road is a requirement for TS4, so they can be put literally anywhere. I'm getting so tired of all the shell buildings in between the functional lots. The worlds are getting more and more sparse because everything is so separated! I don't have HSY but I've seen people say Copperdale feels like a ghost town. And the lots can just be empty, there's no reason every lot needs to be built up from launch. Give people space to build! Because now with each new world all the townies need to get kicked out for space which is a shame.
I don't think we'll see a solution to this problem within TS4's lifetime. Maybe we'll get more rabbit hole window shops. All I hope for is that this design philosophy does not carry over into TS5. I'm just hoping for a CAW tool in TS5 because I've always gotten the most enjoyment out of building up my own towns from scratch. Let me decide what my computer can handle.
Sims 5 better give the control back to the player, that much I'll say. As much as I love Sims 4, I miss having control - it makes a huge difference in the enjoyment of the game for many, many players - including the demographic they're catering to.
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I think the way sims 2 handled sub hoods was great. You could choose to add a downtown or suburb to your hood if you wanted but didn't have to. If performance really is an issue then allowing us attach pack worlds to a save or play without them would have been a way to keep the save file smaller in terms of lots and sims.
they are limiting the game trying to create packs that will sort of work when a user has low specs and dozens of DLC packs simply because most casual users don't understand the capabilities of their systems.
They just have to look to Xbox for the solution. If I'm looking at a game in the store it has a performance check. so i can see at a glance if the game will run well on my PC.
If EA implemented this on the app and told lower spec users they will need to disable x amount of packs for the best playing experience. It would free them up to make the game better, stop higher-end users from feeling consistently disappointed and empower low-end users to get the most out of their game.
That could work, but the thing is that the game also becomes more demanding to run over time as the player starts building on lots and creating relationships with sims in the world, all of this the game needs to store, load, and visualize.
So you can probably run the game with all packs on a computer that can only handle their minimum requirements... but that person will most likely run into problems after having played their save for a while so Maxis designing their packs with these specs in mind feels so unnecessary.
You could be given so many "empty " worlds to build. You choose the climate and landscape then select from different layouts featuring various lot sizes and lot numbers, then simmers can choose what works for their specs. From there you work on adding world elements like trees, scenery, fake houses if you want them. The pack could include some well known landmarks and themes. Then the player can choose it all, want an empty island world? You got it. What a city filled with fake buildings and a glittering skyline? It's yours. Depending on what packs you own you could also get access to the stuff from those neighborhoods.
Also 100% I'm here for world packs. I'm a fan of the sims 4 worlds aesthetic personally. My only complaint is the limited number of lots. I would totally purchase world packs.
Strict budgets are fascinating to me. I appreciate the work of people that must maneuver under strict budgets. I like to watch van-living and tiny-house videos. I don't want my game to be more resource intensive. I'm good with small worlds.